Measles Eradication Falters?

Measles is of course a highly contagious disease that mainly affects children. The symptoms are a fever, coughing and a spotty rash all over the sufferer’s body. It is fatal for 1 or two children in every 1000 infected. Pregnant women can also be adversely affected by this disease, with miscarriages and premature births being the worst results.

The success of vaccination programs in advanced areas of the World has brought many health officials to the optimistic belief that measles could be the next smallpox. This is in the sense that smallpox is the only disease to have been successfully overcome as a health threat. Progress against other diseases such as polio and guinea worm seems to have halted.

There are alternative opinions within the disease control community of experts. Some feel that eradication programs are the ways forward for all major diseases. While others feel that the barriers to genuinely accurate data is too great an obstacle to eradication and reduction timelines for measles is the more effective strategy.

 Resurgence of Measles Cases?

There has been a recent. In Europe with three times as many people falling victim to it in 2007. 2011 was the worst year for a peak in measles with 222 reported cases in the US. Most of these, it has to be said, were imported by non-American visitors from countries where it is endemic. Concerns over vaccine safety and a generation that has forgotten or never known how serious the disease can be, is the accepted reason for this upsurge.

Medecins Sans Frontiere have reported a huge increase in measles all across Africa because of three reasons; 1) donors have not been living up to their commitments on campaigns, 2) promised funding has not been forthcoming and 3) weak and or corrupt systems in many countries. This means the 75% decrease in measles is probably a peak which will not be seen again any year soon.