World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, says the organisation is determined to support countries in the fight against measles.
The WHO chief made this known following a report that global measles deaths increased by 50 percent from 2016 to 2019, claiming over 207,500 lives in 2019.
Development Diaries understands that WHO cited figures from a joint report it published with the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC).
‘Measles killed an estimated 207,500 people in 2019 after a decade-long failure to reach optimal vaccination coverage, resulting in the highest number of cases for 23 years’, WHO said in a statement.
‘The death toll in 2019 was 50 percent higher than a historic low reached in 2016, and all WHO regions saw an increase in cases, adding up to a global total of 869,770.
‘This year, there have been fewer cases, but the Covid-19 pandemic has further set back vaccination efforts, with more than 94 million people at risk of missing measles vaccines in 26 countries that have paused their vaccination campaigns, including many countries with ongoing outbreak’.
Measles is entirely preventable, but success requires 95 percent of children to be vaccinated on time with two doses of measles-containing vaccines (MCV1 and MCV2).
‘We know how to prevent measles outbreaks and deaths’, the statement quoted WHO Ghebreyesus as saying.
‘These data sends a clear message that we are failing to protect children from measles in every region of the world.
‘We must collectively work to support countries and engage communities to reach everyone, everywhere with measles vaccine and stop this deadly virus’.
For her part, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, according to the statement, said, ‘Before there was a [Covid-19] crisis, the world was grappling with a measles crisis, and it has not gone away.
‘While health systems are strained by the Covid-19 pandemic, we must not allow our fight against one deadly disease to come at the expense of our fight against another’.
Senior Technical Advisor on measles and rubella at the WHO, Natasha Crowcroft, said that the good news was that measles vaccinations had saved more than 25.5 million lives globally since 2000.
Source: World Health Organisation
Photo source: U.S. Army Africa
