2024-01-23 17:03:15
The European branch of the World Health Organization took stock of measles cases in Europe last year on Tuesday January 23. In 2023, 42,200 cases were recorded in 41 member countries, almost 45 times more than the previous year.
Europe recorded 30 times more cases of measles between January and October 2023 than in 2022, the European branch of the World Health Organization (WHO) alerted this Tuesday, January 23, calling for intensified vaccination efforts. .
“Between January and October 2023, more than 30,000 cases of measles were reported by 40 of the 53 member states in the region”, which extends to Central Asia, the UN body said in a press release.
In 2022, 941 cases had been reported. For the whole of 2023, 42,200 cases were recorded in 41 member countries, almost 45 times more than the previous year, according to figures made available late Tuesday followingnoon.
“Urgent vaccination efforts”
Kazakhstan and Russia are the most affected countries with more than 10,000 cases each. With 183 cases, the United Kingdom is the country in Western Europe where the resurgence of the disease, considered to be eliminated in 2021, is the most obvious.
“We have seen in the region not only a 30-fold increase in measles cases, but also almost 21,000 hospitalizations and five deaths linked to measles. This is worrying,” said WHO regional director Hans Kluge, cited in the press release.
“Urgent vaccination efforts are needed to stop transmission and prevent spread.”
The resurgence of this highly contagious viral disease, which can cause fatal complications and is spread through the air, is attributed to a drop in vaccination coverage during the Covid years.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the performance of the immunization system during this period, leading to an accumulation of unvaccinated or insufficiently vaccinated children,” adds the organization.
Millions of infants to be immunized
According to the WHO, which is calling for intensified campaigns to raise awareness among unvaccinated communities, more than 1.8 million infants in the region have not been vaccinated once morest measles between 2020 and 2022.
The disease, which manifests itself by a rash preceded by rhinitis, conjunctivitis, cough, accompanied by very high fever and great fatigue, can affect all age groups.
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In 2023, however, two out of five cases were recorded in children between one and four years old and only one in five among those over 20 years old.
At the local level, at least 95% of children must be vaccinated to avoid possible outbreaks during importation of the virus. By 2022, only 92% of European children had received a second dose of vaccine.
The WHO estimates that measles vaccination prevented 56 million deaths between 2000 and 2021. In 2021, the number of deaths from the disease is estimated at 128,000 worldwide, mainly among children under the age of five years unvaccinated or undervaccinated.
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