[Salon] A measles crisis in India



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-12-12/india-racing-to-quell-post-pandemic-measles-crisis?cmpid=BBD121222_prognosis

A “Surreal” Comeback

Measles has made an unwelcome global resurgence from Ohio to Indonesia with cases rising around the world, and the worst of it is happening across India. 

Health workers in the country that’s home to 1.4 billion people are rushing to contain the world’s biggest outbreak of measles, which presents itself through a distinctive dotted rash, coughing and a fever that can be deadly for children under the age of five. More than 11,000 cases were registered in India between April and October this year, the most globally, according to the latest World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data

After India’s health system was devastated last year by a brutal coronavirus wave, the country’s authorities appear to have been taken off guard again by the return of another highly contagious virus in some of its most congested cities like Mumbai, the country’s financial capital.

Though easily preventable through routine MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccinations, a 95% coverage rate is needed to halt community spread. The outbreaks appear largely due to delayed childhood inoculation campaigns caused by Covid lockdowns. Almost 40 million kids across the world missed a measles shot last year, according to a report published last month by the WHO and the US CDC. 

As news of a California measles outbreak spread in January, health officials urged parents to vaccinate their children. The surge boosted Merck's sales of its measles and other vaccines 24 percent last quarter.

In India alone, 2.5 million infants didn’t receive their first dose. That figure was topped only by Nigeria, where 3.1 million children were left out of immunization coverage. 

For some public health experts this latest outbreak has something of a retrograde nature, just like with recent flareups of polio.

“So surreal to see this in 2022,” Madhukar Pai, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal, said on Twitter earlier this month. “In the 90s, during residency training in India, I hardly saw measles, thanks to vaccination.”

India’s central and state health ministries have been trying to stamp out the outbreak. In a repeat of tactics used during the Covid pandemic, the southern state of Kerala is roping in religious leaders to urge their communities to get their children vaccinated.

It’s a race against time, as measles isn’t the only deadly disease likely to reassert itself following the largest sustained decline in childhood vaccinations in about three decades, the WHO and United Nations Children’s Fund warned in July. At least 25 million kids didn’t receive at least one vaccine dose against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis in 2021. 

“This is a red alert for child health,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said at the time. “The consequences will be measured in lives.” — Chris Kay



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