Rev Panam Salud Publica
December 2024
Measles and rubella have long been recognized as priorities for disease prevention because of their devastating consequences for child health; hence, all World Health Organization (WHO) regions currently have a goal to eliminate measles and four out of six WHO regions have a goal to eliminate rubella. Significant global progress has been made in the twenty-first century, with more than 40% of countries in the world verified by a Regional Verification Commission as having eliminated measles and more than 50% of countries having sustained rubella elimination. Making further progress will require addressing fundamental gaps in health systems, a particular challenge in the current global context where many countries face multiple barriers to both sustaining and achieving measles and rubella elimination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeasles is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease that requires high population immunity for transmission to be interrupted. All six World Health Organization regions have committed to eliminating measles; however, no region has achieved and sustained measles elimination. This report describes measles elimination progress during 2000-2022.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNon-communicable diseases have overtaken communicable diseases as the most common cause of death worldwide, with the majority of these deaths in low-income and middle-income countries. Hypertension alone causes over nine million deaths per year.Since 2017, around 750 000 Rohingya refugees have fled violence in Myanmar into Cox's Bazar District in Bangladesh.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep
November 2022
All six World Health Organization (WHO) regions have committed to eliminating measles.* The Immunization Agenda 2021-2030 (IA2030) aims to achieve the regional targets as a core indicator of impact and positions measles as the tracer of a health system's ability to deliver essential childhood vaccines. IA2030 highlights the importance of ensuring rigorous measles surveillance systems to document immunity gaps and achieve 95% coverage with 2 timely doses of measles-containing vaccine (MCV) among children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the widespread disruption of immunization services, including the postponement of mass vaccination campaigns.
Methods: In May 2020, the World Health Organization and partners started monitoring COVID-19-related disruptions to mass vaccination campaigns against cholera, measles, meningitis A, polio, tetanus-diphtheria, typhoid, and yellow fever through the Immunization Repository Campaign Delay Tracker. The authors reviewed the number and target population of reported preventive and outbreak response vaccination campaigns scheduled, postponed, canceled, and reinstated at 4 time points: May 2020, December 2020, May 2021, and December 2021.