The highest measles in 25 years in the European region, which says

The number of measles cases in the European region doubled last year to reach the highest level in 25 years, health officials say.

A joint report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, said children under five accounted for more than 40% of the cases reported in Europe and Central Asia.

“Measles has returned, and it is a call of attention,” said Hans Henri Klugo, regional director of Europe. “Without high vaccination rates, there is no health security.”

The MMR vaccine, which immunizes people against measles, papers and rubella, is 97% effective to fight the dangerous virus.

Measles is a highly contagious disease that spreads by cough and sneezing.

Common symptoms include:

• High fever
• Pain, red and aqueous eyes
• cough
• sneeze

The measles virus can lead to pneumonia, brain swelling and death.

The joint OS/UNICEF analysis that covers 53 countries said there were 127,350 measles cases reported in the European region in 2024, the highest since 1997.

A total of 38 deaths had been reported until March 6, 2025.

The measles cases, they added, had been decreasing since 1997, but the trend was reversed in 2018-19 and the cases increased significantly by 2023-24 “after a setback in immunization coverage during the COVID-19” pandemic.

“The vaccination rates in many countries have not yet returned to the levels prior to the pandemic, which increases the risk of shoots,” they warned.

The European region represented a third of all cases of measles worldwide in 2024, according to the joint analysis. Within that area, Romania had the greatest number of cases, 30,692, followed by Kazakhstan with 28,147.

The WHO/UNICEF statement concluded that measles remained “a significant global threat” and urged governments where cases occurred to take quick measures, and those in which the virus had not arrived to be prepared to act.

There has been Two deaths in the United States recently Like the disease, which was considered “eliminated” in the United States in 2000, it also spreads there and throughout Canada.

Vaccination rates have been blamed for the recent outbreak.

In Europe, for example, eight out of 10 people who were diagnosed with measles in the last year were not vaccinated, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Estimates of 2023 show that only four countries, Hungary, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia, had fulfilled the threshold of 95% for vaccination to avoid an outbreak, ECDC said Tuesday.

The concern has been expressed in the United Kingdom tooOn the spread of the disease, since vaccination rates for two doses have fallen below 90%.

Dr. Ben Kasstan-Dabush of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warned people who did not trust the information not verified in their social networks.

“We also learned from the COVID-19 vaccination program that erroneous information can travel quickly and can influence people’s decisions. It is important to take into account that vaccine information in social networks is not based on scientific evidence,” said Dr. Kasstan-Dabush.