LONDON — A severe measles outbreak in Britain could spread to tens of thousands of people, local health experts have warned, as Europe grapples with a surge in the highly contagious disease. .
Since October, there have been 216 confirmed cases and 103 probable cases in England's urban West Midlands region, centered on the city of Birmingham, the UK Health and Safety Executive said on Friday. announced that around 80% of infections have been recorded in the region. This is higher than last year's total of 209 measles cases and 2022's total of 53 measles cases.
Last year, the government warned that an outbreak of measles in London could result in between 40,000 and 160,000 infections if vaccination rates did not improve. In the UK, this rate has been falling for years due to misinformation and declining community health budgets.
Around 89% of children in the UK have received their first dose of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine by the age of two, down from 93% a decade ago, according to the state-run National Health Service. The World Health Organization believes that the threshold required to maintain herd immunity is 95%.
Englishman information campaign is now urging people to ensure their children are vaccinated.
British MP Maria Caulfield, a former health secretary, laid out the scale of the challenge in the House of Commons on Monday, saying more than 3.4 million children under the age of 16 have not been vaccinated against measles.
For Europe as a whole, Hans Kluge, regional director of the World Health Organization, said: warning on wednesday In 2023, there will be 42,200 measles cases in 41 countries, nearly a 45-fold increase from the 941 cases recorded the previous year. He said about 21,000 people were hospitalized last month.
The crisis is also growing in Central Asia, with the region recording more than 13,600 cases in 2023, the majority of them in unvaccinated children under 14, the WHO said. .
Three US states have also recorded measles cases in the last month. Philadelphia has confirmed at least eight locally transmitted cases, in addition to the one “imported” case that triggered a health alert in December. Camden County, New Jersey, confirmed a case on January 13, and soon after, Georgia health officials confirmed the state's first case in four years, an unvaccinated resident of Atlanta.
Measles is most common in children. The disease is usually characterized by a high fever, cough, runny nose, and red, patchy rash followed by red, watery eyes. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 5 unvaccinated measles patients is hospitalized, and up to 3 in 1,000 children who contract measles develop complications such as pneumonia and brain swelling. Dead.
The MMR vaccine is given to children aged 12 months in the UK, with a second dose given just after they turn three years old. Children in the United States receive their second dose between the ages of 4 and 6. Two shots are 97% effective, according to the CDC.
Professor Helen Bedford, from University College London's Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said: “Even if vaccination is complete, it is extremely difficult to maintain such high levels of vaccination for long periods of time.'' “It's difficult,” he says. “Once you get there, the disease is cured and people think, 'Oh, the disease is cured. There's no need to vaccinate.'
Experts said several other factors were accelerating Britain's vaccination challenge. For one, uptake remains particularly low among low-income and ethnically diverse groups, according to the 2021 NHS Survey in South East England.
“It's the poor, the people who are highly mobile and don't stay in one place,” said Azeem Majeed, professor of primary care and public health at Imperial College London. “The NHS needs to be more proactive when it comes to messaging.”
On Thursday, Brent Borough Council announced that in an effort to appeal to non-English speakers, A video has been released About measles in Romanian.
The second factor is a now-discredited study published in 1998 that falsely claimed that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism. The paper was partially retracted in 2004, by which time vaccination coverage had fallen to 81%. The study was completely retracted in 2010, and author Andrew Wakefield was removed from the UK medical register.
Thousands of children born in the late 1990s and early 2000s are now unvaccinated adults.
“About 20 years ago, infection rates were low, so there were a lot of vulnerable young people, and then over the years, particularly in some parts of London, there has been a buildup of vulnerable people,” Bedford said. said.
But Bedford doesn't think vaccine hesitancy or the spread of conspiracy theories are the main problems. A 2022 survey found British parents' confidence in vaccines was as high as 90%.
“The anti-vaccination movement is very small, but its voice is very loud,” she says. “So I think it's important not to get too wrapped up in that because there's a lot of things we can do. And if you focus only on the anti-vaxxers, it's even harder to know what to do. .”
Instead, Mr Bedford pointed to two other factors: cuts to community nurses and reforms to the NHS, including the 2013 decision to spread responsibility for vaccines across multiple agencies rather than one.
Additionally, there was a persistent view among some Britons that measles was a trivial childhood disease, a dangerous view, she said.
“Given the best-case scenario, measles is a nasty disease that makes children very sick. But of course, there are high rates of serious complications such as ear infections, pneumonia, and brain inflammation. is recognized and, of course, it can lead to death,” Bedford said.
This week, clinics across the West Midlands region urged patients to: Don't show up without notice If you suspect you have measles, please call ahead. If you have contracted measles, this will prevent you from spreading it to others. You may become ill,” the promotional flyer says.
Patrick Smith reported from London and Alia Bendix from New York.
