The World Health Organization announced on Tuesday that the cases of measles spread on a large scale as more than 306,000 cases were reported worldwide last year — a 79 % increase from 2022.
“We in the measles world are extremely concerned,” said Natasha Crowcroft, a WHO technical adviser on measles and rubella.
She said that cases of measles are typically under-reported and that the real number was surely far higher.
The UN health agency models the numbers every year to get more accurate figures, with its latest estimate specifying that there were 9.2 million cases and 136,216 measles deaths in 2022.
Such modelling has not yet been done for last year. Crowcroft pointed out that 2022 had already seen a 43 % jump in deaths from the year before.
Crowcroft told journalists in Geneva, via video-link from Cairo, “Given the ballooning case numbers, we would anticipate an increase in deaths in 2023 as well and this year is going to be very challenging.”
She warned that more than half of all countries on a global level are presently believed to be at high risk of measles outbreaks by the end of the year.
And some 142 million children are estimated to be susceptible to falling ill. Notably, Measles is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that attacks mainly children. The most serious complications include blindness, brain swelling, diarrhoea, and severe respiratory infections.
She said, “A major cause of the swelling numbers is the “backsliding immunisation coverage”.
Over 95 % of children need to be fully vaccinated against the disease in a locality to prevent outbreaks, but global vaccination rates have slipped to 83 %.
Comments