Covid 19 pandemic has put the break on vaccination and as such the world is in the fear major outbreaks such as measles in 2021. The scientists in a recent article in the Lancet Journal warned of the outbreak as an unexpected consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lead author Kim Mulholland, Chair of the World Health Organization’s SAGE Working Group on measles and rubella vaccines, pointed out that several children have missed out on measles vaccination in 2020, which makes future outbreaks inevitable. In the report, the scientists said that 2020 was a quiet year for measles because of travel reductions and covid restrictions.
However, Mulholand said that economic impacts could lead to an increased case of malnutrition among children. The researchers pointed out that malnutrition and measels are closely related and that malnutrition worsened the severity of measles. The low and middle income countries will be hit severely, the researchers noted. They believe that the coming months will see an increase of unimmunized child susceptible to measles. The children living in poor nations and those in remote communities are the most affected.
The WHO said that delayed vaccination and the scheduled measles vaccine doses affected 94 million children in 26 countries. Measles had a comeback in 2019 even before the pandemic started. The world saw 9.8 million measles cases and 207,000 deaths in 2019, which was 50 per cent more than in 2016.
