The World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that measles cases rose by 20% last year due to a lack of vaccine coverage in the world’s poorest and conflict-torn countries.
They said that nearly half of the large and devastating outbreaks occurred in the African region, where the number of deaths increased by 37%.
“At this moment, every country in the world has access to the measles vaccine, so there is no reason why no child should get the disease and no child should die from measles,” said Natasha Crawcroft, of the World Health Organization, a senior technical advisor at the WHO. The field of measles and vaccines. German measles told reporters.
Measles is caused by an airborne virus that mostly affects children under the age of five, but can be prevented with two doses of the measles vaccine. However, the World Health Organization and CDC said immunization coverage was “inadequate” globally.
A report by the two agencies showed that about 10.3 million cases of the highly contagious infection would be reported in 2023, compared to 8.65 million cases reported the previous year.
The number of deaths linked to the disease fell by 8% to 107,500 due to improved access to health services and vaccines in high-income countries, such as Europe, where cases rose last year.
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The agencies said that regardless of this decrease, the death toll was “unacceptable.”
WHO’s Crowcroft said the “biggest and most impactful” reason for the spike in cases was the failure of systems to reach children with vaccines. However, vaccine hesitancy also played a role.
Vaccine hesitancy has increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as people have lost confidence in the importance of routine vaccinations for children against diseases such as measles and polio.
More than 22 million children will miss the first dose of measles vaccine in 2023, the agencies said.
That year, measles outbreaks were reported in 57 countries due to gaps in vaccination coverage, representing a nearly 60% jump from 36 countries the previous year, the report said.
Apart from the African region, a significant increase in cases has been reported in the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe, Southeast Asia and Western Pacific regions, the report said.
(Reporting by Sriparna Roy and Maryam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguly)
