HQ Team
January 20, 2024: Measles is fast witnessing a surge across the world and the latest region reporting an upsurge is central England. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has declared a national incident, signalling a growing public health risk.
The agency reported 216 confirmed cases and 103 probable cases in the West Midlands since October 1, with the majority being in children under the age of 10. There are concerns that it could spread to other cities and towns.
In Britain, MMR is part of the routine childhood immunisation programme. But reports indicate that this basic vaccine coverage has gone down. Last year, the UKHSA said that in some areas and groups in London, coverage of the first MMR dose at two years of age was as low as 69.5 per cent.
The UKHSA has warned of a resurgence of cases of the virus. It is feared that London could witness an outbreak of 40,000 to 160,000 in low vaccine coverage rates.
“With vaccine uptake in some communities so low, there is now a very real risk of seeing the virus spread in other towns and cities,” said UKHSA Chief Executive Jenny Harries.
Harries said immediate action was needed to boost uptake of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine in areas where it was low.
“We need a long-term concerted effort to protect individuals and to prevent large measles outbreaks,” she added.
Immunization disruption
Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world but is preventable by two doses of vaccine. The Covid-19 pandemic massively disrupted routine immunisation efforts worldwide, and the bounce back has been slow.
A report from the World Health Organization and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in November that there had been a “staggering” annual rise in measles cases and deaths globally in 2022.
New data published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Reports has marked out four regions in Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean region with the largest outbreaks. In number terms, over 136,000 people, most of them children, died of the highly contagious disease in 2022. This is inspite of a most effective vaccine available against the disease.
The CDC estimates that 63% of measles deaths occurred in Africa, 29% in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region, and 7% in the WHO South-East Asia region. Measles is one of the most contagious viruses in the world but is preventable by two doses of vaccine. The Covid-19 pandemic massively disrupted routine immunisation efforts worldwide, and the bounce back has been slow.
Decreasing immune defences
The World Health Organisation considers a 95% immunisation coverage rate safe from measles; the world currently is standing at 83%. Thirty-three million children missed at least one of two necessary doses of measles vaccination in 2022. Twenty-two million of them didn’t receive even their first.
In the US, vaccination exemptions have reached the highest on record nationwide among kindergartners, the CDC reported. An estimated 250,000 kindergarten children are at risk of measles.
Because it’s so infectious, measles tend to be the first pathogen to exploit any gap in a population’s immune defenses, but it also acts as a harbinger to other preventable infectious diseases such as diphtheria, pertussis, and more.
