Measles alert
More than 16,500 new cases of measles were reported in Romania within a year, amid a drop in the vaccination rate, and 16 people died from the disease
Mihaela Ignătescu, 29.05.2024, 13:50
The anti-vaccination campaigns, which gained momentum with the COVID19 pandemic, are starting to show effects. Romania, where the voices against inoculation are increasingly strong, especially on social media, ranks 5th in Europe in terms of the rate of measles infections and first in the European Union, according to the World Health Organization.
The WHO report also shows that at the level of the whole of Europe, the number of diseases registered this year will exceed that of all the cases reported in 2023 – over 60,000. In the first 3 months of this year alone, over 56,000 cases of illnesses and 4 related deaths were reported. Measles is a highly contagious viral disease, which has a devastating effect especially on the health of children under 5 years of age.
Over 16,500 new cases of measles appeared in Romania within a year, and 16 people died from this disease, the Public Health Institute in Bucharest has reported. Most illnesses were recorded in the center of the country and in the Capital.
The vice-president of the National Society of Family Medicine, Gindrovel Dumitra, told Radio Romania that the only ones protected against measles are those who have been vaccinated and those who have already had the disease. He also emphasized the fact that measles has no specific treatment and urged all parents whose children have fallen ill to see a doctor immediately. Gindrovel Dumitra:
“Once they have contracted the disease, there is no way to treat it with antiviral or antibiotic medication. It is simply just a supportive treatment, to help the body to overcome this event and at the same time we can administer a series of other substances that help prevent other related effects. That is why it is mandatory to see a doctor, precisely to try to avoid complications and implicitly death through the therapeutic means that we have available at this moment.”
Dumitra said that the current anti-vaccination trend was present in Romania and in the world even before the pandemic, but that it grew when some people who got vaccinated found that, after a certain time, their immunity to COVID19 decreased again. He stressed that the measles vaccine provides lifelong immunity. According to WHO statistics, almost 240 cases per 100,000 inhabitants are registered in Romania.
Last year, of the children under 5 who contracted the disease, more than 75% had not received a single dose of the measles vaccine. The measles vaccination rate in Romania was 81% in 2021. It was 86% in 2019, before the outbreak of the pandemic, and exceeded 90% in 1990. (MI)
