European countries saw a 30-fold rise in measles cases last year amid declining vaccination coverage, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
Between January and October 2023, there were more than 30,000 measles cases reported across 40 of the WHO European Region’s 53 countries, compared with just 941 cases the year before.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has recently declared a national incident due to increasing cases of measles, which have been concentrated in the West Midlands.
As well as rising cases across the continent, there were almost 21,000 hospitalisations and 5 measles-related deaths reported over the same period.
With a recent acceleration in cases, the WHO warned that this trend is expected to continue unless ‘urgent measures’ are taken across Europe to prevent transmission.
Regional director for Europe Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge said vaccination is ‘the only way to protect children from this potentially dangerous disease’.
‘Urgent vaccination efforts are needed to halt transmission and prevent further spread. It is vital that all countries are prepared to rapidly detect and timely respond to measles outbreaks, which could endanger progress towards measles elimination,’ he added.
Both the WHO and the UK Government have attributed the resurgence of measles to declining vaccination coverage – UKHSA’s figures last year showed that England’s MMR vaccine uptake by five years of age had fallen to the lowest rates since 2010/11.
Health minister Maria Caulfield told Parliament yesterday that the public’s reluctance to come forward for vaccines is driving declining coverage, rather than a lack of capacity at GP practices and within the system.
In a written statement, she said: ‘GPs are putting on extra clinics, but we have to get the message out. It is not through a lack of vaccines or a lack of messaging, but we still have vaccine hesitancy. We all have a role to play in getting communities to come forward.’
She added: ‘We have plenty of vaccine—that is one of the messages we want to get out—and that is both the traditional MMR vaccine and the non-porcine vaccine. We also have plenty of vaccination spaces.
‘We have spaces at GP clinics and pharmacies, and the school roll-out programme has spaces, but we still do not have people coming forward.’
In response to the outbreaks, NHS England has asked healthcare professionals including GP practice staff to wear PPE when dealing with suspected cases, and has launched a catch-up campaign for children aged six to 11 who still require the MMR vaccine.
This builds on the catch-up campaign for children aged 12 months to five years, which began in November and is being led by GPs.
Ms Caulfield told MPs that these catch up efforts in 2023 resulted in a 10% increase in MMR vaccine uptake compared to the year before.
In England, there were 209 confirmed cases of measles from January to November 2023, and 1,613 suspected cases for the entire year, which is more than double the number in 2022.
And latest data for the West Midlands showed that there have been 216 confirmed cases and a further 103 ‘probable’ cases since the start of October.
Pulse reported at the start of the month that some GPs in this area were seeing children with measles for the first time in their career.
