From Uche Uche, Damaturu
The World Health Organization and U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has found that measles cases between January and November this year rose three-fold compared to the same period in 2018 and the organizations gave estimated that more than 140,000 people died of measles in 2018, up from an all-time low of 90,000 in 2016.
As contained in WHO press release, WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus denounced the total as an “outrage” and “collective failure” given the disease’s preventability by vaccine.
According to the findings of the two organization, measles outbreaks occurred in every region of the world in 2018, and some countries scrambled to vaccinate citizens only after outbreaks began. In Samoa, where more than four thousand measles cases have been reported in recent weeks, the government shut down to carry out a mass vaccination campaign
“Measles, the most contagious of all vaccine-preventable diseases, is the tip of the iceberg of other vaccine-preventable disease threats and should be a wake-up call,” Heidi Larson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the BBC.
“Anti-vax misinformation spread through social media is contributing to a rise in cases in affluent countries such as the UK and U.S., while problems in health services play a big part elsewhere,” Sarah Boseley writes for the Guardian.
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