|
 Saying she was "taken aback" by high case numbers, Zsuzsanna Jakab,
the U.N. health agency's European director, said the 22,149 reported
cases from seven countries threatened the region's goal of
eliminating measles by the end of 2015.
Even though measles cases fell by 50 percent from 2013 to 2014,
large outbreaks continue is both eastern and western Europe, the WHO
said.
Italy has seen 1,674 measles cases since the beginning of last year,
while Germany has had 583, Kyrgyzstan 7,477 and Russia more than
3,240.
"We must collectively respond, without further delay, to close
immunization gaps," Jakab said in a statement. "It is unacceptable
that, after the last 50 years’ efforts to make safe and effective
vaccines available, measles continues to cost lives, money and
time."
Measles is a contagious and sometimes deadly viral disease which can
spread very swiftly among unvaccinated children.
There is no specific treatment and most people recover within a few
weeks, but, particularly in poor and malnourished children and
people with reduced immunity, measles can cause serious
complications including blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhea,
ear infection and pneumonia.
A measles outbreak in the United States has seen more than 150
people infected, many of them linked to the wave of illness that
authorities believe began when an infected person from out of the
country visited Disneyland in late December 2014.
Measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000 after
decades of intensive childhood vaccine efforts. But that status was
lost after immunization rates were damaged by an anti-vaccination
movement driven in the past decade by now de-bunked studies
suggesting links between vaccines and autism.
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In 2014, the United States had its highest number of cases in two
decades.
Nedret Emiroglu, a WHO Europe's infectious diseases expert, said
beating the disease meant controlling any epidemics as quickly as
possible and pushing vaccination rates to the highest possible
levels in every country.
"All countries, with no exception, need to keep a very high coverage
of regular measles vaccination so that similar outbreaks won't
happen again... and measles can be eliminated once and for all," she
said.
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
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