According to data from the World Health Organization, Harvard University, Lancaster University and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the cases of measles last year they increased against 18% to 9 million worldwide. The deaths of measles increased by 43% compared to last year with 130,000 deaths in 2022, with most deaths being children in developing countries.

The doctors of the Therapeutic Clinic (Alexandra Hospital) of the EKPA School of Medicine – the pathologist, professor of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine of the EKPA School of Medicine Theodora Psaltopoulou and the biologist Panagiota Zacharaki – summarize the data and report that measles, which it was once controlled through extensive vaccination, reappears due to reduction of vaccinations internationally.

Efforts to increase vaccination (with MMR – measles, rubella, mumps vaccine for children and adults) aim to restore herd immunity and prevent outbreaks.

The most infectious disease known to science

The measles R number (o average number of people someone will infect with the virus) from 15 or more it overcomes even the wildest variants of SARS-CoV-2.

The complications of measles range from relatively mild, such as diarrhea, to more significant, such as pneumonia, otitis media and encephalitis (rarely, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis), corneal ulceration, with scarring.

Because of this infectivity it has never been completely possible to achieve eradication, but many countries have been declared measles free by the World Health Organization (WHO). For example, the USA was considered free of the disease in 2000, after 95% of the population had been vaccinated or infected.

However, while the UK was deemed measles-free in 2016, it lost its status just two years later. And now there are increasing numbers of cases across England, with a major spike in London.

The autism rumors that scared the world and stopped vaccination

In the wake of the successful eradication of smallpox in the 1970s, a similar global vaccination effort has crushed measles deaths from 2.6 million in 1980 to 73,000 by 2014.

The main weapon in the war against measles was the vaccine MMR, released in 1971, which also provides immunity against mumps and rubella – two other viruses with potentially nasty long-term effects.

Its global development MMR was perhaps the greatest public health triumph of the last quarter of the 20th century, saving at least 56 million livesaccording to WHO estimates from 2000 to 2021.

Until, the 1998in The Lancet (the famous scientific journal) false statements were made claims about a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In 2010, the paper was retracted by the journal and its lead author, Andrew Wakefield, was suspended from practicing medicine in the UK.

Despite numerous studies confirming both the effectiveness and safety of MMR and the failure to find any link to autism, many people are beginning to have second thoughts about vaccinating their children.

The importance of vaccinating children and adults – Fears of an epidemic in Greece as well

Before vaccination, 2.6 million young children died each year and millions more lived with deafness or brain damage.

Vaccination hesitancy helped measles make a comeback, with the global deaths to amount to 130,000 in 2022.

Vaccination reluctance is now a problem for all vaccination programs, particularly for measles, as the R of 15 or more means that any drop in vaccine coverage will result rapid increase in cases.

Where vaccine coverage becomes locally low, local outbreaks of significant severity may occur. Many countries have now lost measles-free status, notably in Europe countries such as Albania, the Czech Republic and Greece, as well as the United Kingdom.

THE vaccination MMR isn’t just for kids. Even if an adult received an MMR vaccination as a child or survived a measles attack in the days before vaccination, their immunity may be weakened. Although illness after the first vaccination is rare, adult MMR vaccination is still worthwhile, as it goes beyond protecting the individual receiving the vaccination to a larger population. Strengthening the immunity of adults against these three viruses reduces the possibility of asymptomatic infection and minimizes the possibility of carriage. Adult MMR vaccination can help restore some of the herd immunity that has been lost due to vaccine hesitancy.

Opting for MMR in unvaccinated or single-dose adults helps protect everyone from measles and helps prevent rubella in pregnant women and their babies. Also, for men, the choice of MMR, if someone has not been vaccinated or has been vaccinated from a single dose, also protects against orchitis, the inflammation of the testicles that is a symptom of mumps. It is worth underlining that about 1 in 5 unvaccinated people who get measles may need hospitalization, while 1 to 3 in every 1,000 children who get sick die from serious complications. On the other hand, people who are vaccinated are considered protected for life: one dose is 93% effective and two doses 97%.