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PARIS, March 28 – After the declaration of the state of emergency by a New York County to prevent the spread of a measles outbreak, why this disease, once eliminated, again in rise?
Health Alert
Measles is an airborne infection that causes fever, cough, and rashes that can be fatal in rare cases.
It is more contagious than tuberculosis or the Ebola virus, but it is easily preventable thanks to a vaccine costing a few cents.
The UN said measles cases worldwide had surged more than 30 percent in 2017 and that the number of infections had continued to rise last year.
According to the United Nations Children's Agency (UN), only 10 countries were at the origin of the outbreak of cases in 2018.
While most countries that have experienced strong activity peaks are in turmoil or conflict, several richer countries have also seen their caseloads increase.
No, MMR does not cause autism
A total of 98 countries reported more cases of measles in 2018 than in 2017. But the causes varied considerably.
The World Health Organization warned that the growing anti-vaccine movement in the richest countries was one of the top ten threats to health.
The phenomenon has adherents in several Western countries, including Britain and France, but is probably the most prominent in the United States, where measles cases jumped 559% between 2017 and 2018.
Anti-vaxxers have been citing for years a fraudulent study conducted in 1998 by the discredited British researcher Andrew Wakefield, who suggested a link between MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella and a risk of autism and of intestinal disease in children.
Repeated studies – the most recent of more than 650,000 children followed for more than ten years – have shown that there is no such link.
The United Nations Children's Fund warned that complacency and misinformation were behind the resurgence of measles in the richest countries.
"Measles may be the disease, but all too often the real infection is misinformation, mistrust and complacency," said Henrietta Fore, director of Unicef, this month.
Measles cases have more than tripled in Europe in 2018, according to WHO, with notable epidemics in Romania, Italy and France.
The lack of access
In other parts of the world, many people do not have access to vaccines and clean sanitation facilities for measles.
WHO recommends a 95% vaccination rate to prevent mbad hospitalizations and deaths.
Since September, at least 800 children have died from measles in Madagascar, where severe malnutrition and a historically low vaccination rate lead to the worst epidemic in the world today.
Yemen also ranks among UNICEF's "Top 10" countries with the largest increases in measles cases last year, up 316% from 2,101 in 2017 to 8,742 in 2018 .
Venezuela in crisis, as well as parts of Brazil, have recorded tens of thousands of confirmed measles cases since last year.
In the Philippines, where vaccination rates have been declining for years, measles cases have gone from 791 in 2017 to 5,120 last year. Twenty-five people died of measles in January alone.
And in Ukraine, which has experienced five years of latent conflict with Russia in its border region to the east, more than 30,000 people have caught measles this year. At least 11 died of the disease. – AFP
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