• Measles is a highly contagious viral disease which can cause coughing, rashes and fever, leading to pneumonia and encephalitis, or brain swelling in children under five
• WHO recommends a 95 per cent vaccination coverage to protect populations from the disease
Most of the more than 142,000 people who died of measles in 2018 globally were children below five years, a new report shows.
The report, released on Friday by the World Health Organisation and the Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention, is concerned is that vaccination rates have stagnated in the past 10 years.
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease. It can cause coughing, rashes and fever, leading to complications like pneumonia and encephalitis, or brain swelling, especially in children under five years.
In Kenya, measles cases rose from 63 in 2017 to 822 in 2018, according to the Health ministry.
Kajiado alone had 420 cases between January and September. There was one fatality.
"The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world’s most vulnerable children," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreysus said.
The CDC and WHO report shows that more than 9.7 million people were infected in 2018 compared to 7.6 million in 2017 when 124,000 died.
Image: MAGDALINE SAYA
The WHO estimates that there were 1,759,000 infections and 52,600 deaths in Africa in 2018.
“To save lives, we must ensure everyone can benefit from vaccines, which means investing in immunisation and quality health care as a right for all,” Ghebreysus said.
The worst impacts of measles were in sub-Saharan Africa, where many children have persistently missed out on vaccination.
Some wealthier countries have also been battling the measles outbreaks.
Some 86 per cent of children globally received the first dose of measles vaccine in 2018 through routine vaccination services with less than 70 receiving the second recommended dose.
“We’ve had a safe and effective measles vaccine for over 50 years. These estimates remind us that every child everywhere needs and deserves this life-saving vaccine. We must turn this trend around and stop these preventable deaths by improving measles vaccine access and coverage,” Robert Linkins said.
Linkins is the head of Accelerated Disease Control and Vaccine-Preventable Disease Surveillance at the CDC. He is also the chair of the Measles and Rubella Initiative.
The vaccination coverage for measles in the country as of July 1 has decreased in the past three years, according to the WHO and UNICEF.
The data indicated that in the last one year from 2017 to 2018, the number of children who received the first dose of measles vaccination reduced from 97 per cent in 2016 and stagnated at 90 per cent in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Most of the children are not getting their second dosage of measles vaccination, which started being available from 2015.
While measles is preventable, WHO recommends a 95 per cent vaccination coverage with the two doses to protect populations from the disease. However, global coverage with the first dose has for several years stalled at 85 per cent.
The second dosage coverage stood at 32 per cent in 2015 and rose to 42 per cent in 2018. This is far short of the 95 per cent needed to prevent outbreaks and leaves many people exposed.
Image: FILE
Second dose coverage stands at 67 per cent whereas it is 42 per cent in Kenya, way below the required percentage to prevent outbreaks.
This means that most of the children are missing the lifesaving vaccines.
“It is a tragedy that the world is seeing a rapid increase in cases and deaths from a disease that is easily preventable with a vaccine,” Gavi CEO Seth Berkley said.
“While hesitancy and complacency are challenges to overcome, the largest measles outbreaks have hit countries with weak routine immunisation and health systems. We must do better at reaching the most vulnerable, and that will be a fundamental focus of Gavi’s next five-year period.”