– this is an alarm clock. These cases have not happened over a night and the lack of action today will have disastrous consequences for the children of tomorrow, ” says Henrietta H. Fore, Unicef’s executive director in a statement.
Measles is a highly contagious and potentially fatal viral disease that is spread through the air. Those who are at risk are mainly unvaccinated persons, and newborns with compromised immune systems. There is no cure for the disease when you have become ill, but it is possible to prevent with vaccination.
the disease has gained new momentum in the recent years and is spreading at an alarming rate across the world, shows a recent report from Unicef.
“We have a safe, effective and inexpensive vaccine against a highly contagious disease, a vaccine that has saved almost a million lives each year over the past two decades,” says Henrietta H. Fore.
Why the new epidemics occurred have different explanations-partly due to the armed conflict and to vaccinationspersonal have difficult to reach out to the population. There are countries like Congo-Kinshasa, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
In Europe and North and south America, it is mostly vaccinskepsis that makes mässlingfallen increases. One of the ten worst affected countries of mässlingsfall last year is France, which is believed to be linked to the vaccinationsmotstånd. The country has one of the world’s lowest confidence in vaccination, writes The Guardian, and refers to a research study.
of the world health organization for the first time brought up vaccinationsmotstånd on the list of the ten largest global health risks 2019 in its report. To try to reverse the trend, will the WHO to step up work on vaccination against communicable diseases in the coming years.
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Read more: Setback in the world – mässlingsfallen increases
The largest increase of mässlingsfall from 2017 to 2018 took place in the Ukraine, the Philippines and Brazil, according to Unicef. In Ukraine, there were 35.120 cases of measles in the year 2018. According to the government, has further 24.042 people infected only during the first two months of 2019.
In the Philippines have so far been reported 12.736 mässlingfall and 203 deaths due to the disease, compared with 15.599 cases throughout 2018.
In Sweden, it was reported 38 cases of measles last year, but no one died. During the winter, by 2017-2018 suffered Gothenburg, sweden, the largest mässlingsutbrottet in Sweden since the turn of the millennium. 28 people were infected, but none was seriously ill. In the beginning of February this year, found yet another mässlingsfall, this time in Stockholm.
the 72 children and adults in the measles last year. The incidence was the highest in ten years, and three times larger than the year before.
According to the Henrietta H. Fore had almost all of these cases can be prevented. Routine vaccination of young children and monitoring are important factors in the fight against the disease. Therefore, Unicef together with the health authorities in several countries have implemented vaccination campaigns in the last two years. The work continues in the years in, among others, the Philippines, where it plans to vaccinate nine million children against measles.
Read more: Record number of cases of measles in Europe
Read more: Mässlingsfall confirmed in Stockholm
