December 16, 2023

2023-12-16 07:00:12

The alarm was given on Friday by Unicef. Between January and December 2023, 30,601 cases of measles have been recorded in Europe and Central Asia, compared to 909 for the whole of 2022 according to agency data. Either an increase of 3000%.

“There is no clearer sign of deteriorating vaccination coverage than the increase in the number of measles cases. Such a dramatic increase requires urgent attention and public health measures to protect children from this dangerous and deadly disease“, said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF regional director for Europe and Central Asia.

An epidemic outbreak in October

While the highest rate of measles cases is recorded in Kazakhstan, with 69 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, Romania, which announced a national measles epidemic last week, has a rate of 9.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. , or 1,855 cases.

In its latest edition, the daily newspaper du Médecin reports that France is no exception to this trend. “There are 106 cases of measles confirmed in 2023, compared to 19 in 2022. This represents a prevalence which increases from 0.29/100,000 during the year 2022, to 1.64/100,000 over a rolling period of 12 months, or 5.7 times more“, it is written there.

Last October, an epidemic outbreak was also reported in a town in Ardèche where around sixty children were infected in the space of a month. Most were college kids to four adults.

Asked regarding the possible return of this disease in France, Professor Brigitte Chabrol, head of the pediatrics department at the Timone-Enfants Hospital in Marseille, wants to be reassuring. “There is no real acute risk of an epidemic. Even if measles is not completely eradicated, in France we benefit from good vaccination coverage. Without existing treatment, the vaccine remains the only defense once morest this disease. Vaccinated people are 95% protected. On the other hand, unvaccinated people are absolutely not protected, unless they have already had measles, since it is a disease that you only get once. The resurgence of measles is therefore closely linked to a relaxation of vaccination as is the case in certain regions of the world or even Europe. In France, to avoid any significant risk of circulation, we have also made the vaccine compulsory, since 2018, for children aged one year.”

High contagiousness

Serious life-threatening illness, it is transmitted by droplets of saliva and is characterized by a rash “a little velvety“which spreads”in three days on the whole body with specific signs of viral infection. On the other hand, it can cause serious neurological complications such as encephalitis.“

More what most characterizes this disease is its contagiousness. For comparison, a person infected with measles infects an average of 15 people, compared to 3 or 4 with Covid and 1.3 with the flu.

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