Measles infection numbers rose sharply in 2023 – now the WHO is warning

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Highly contagious infectious disease
Why does the WHO warn about measles?

A hand with a typical measles rash

© Romolo Tavani

Nicole Simon

The number of measles infections rose sharply in 2023 compared to the previous year. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) is sounding the alarm.

The WHO has recorded over 30,000 cases of measles between January and October 2023 for the European Region, which extends to Central Asia. In the entire year of 2022, however, just 941 cases were reported. However, cases of infection are not evenly distributed across the continent. In terms of population, Kyrgyzstan leads the list with the highest incidences, followed by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Russia is in sixth place. Turkey is in seventh place and Austria in tenth place. In Germany, on the other hand, the situation is much more relaxed: last year, the Robert Koch Institute reported just 57 cases of measles.

Experts also see reasons for the increasing number of cases in some regions in the corona pandemic. In Europe, the rate of first measles vaccination in young children fell from 96 percent in 2019 to 93 percent in 2022. During the same period, vaccination coverage with the second dose fell from 92 percent to 91 percent. In total, more than 1.8 million young children in the WHO European Region are reported to have missed their measles vaccination between 2020 and 2022. The fact that some countries are doing much better than others is also due to the measles vaccination requirement, which exists in almost a dozen EU countries, including Italy, France, Croatia and Slovenia. Since March 1, 2020, it has also applied to Germany’s daycare and school children.

You can find out everything you should know about the situation in Germany and about compulsory vaccination, symptoms and complications here.

Published in 06/24

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