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Eradication of measles by 2010 unlikely
Experts say that the planned global eradication of measles by 2010 is unlikely because of high rates of infection in parts of Europe where children are not vaccinated.
The research, published in The Lancet, comes from Denmark. Mark Muscat and colleagues looked at national surveillance data covering 2006 to 2007 from 32 European countries.
They found that there was a total of 12 132 recorded cases of measles in 32 European countries. Of these, 85% of cases came from Romania, Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Italy.
Many of the cases were in unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated children, but 20% were in people over the age of 20. There were 7 measles-related deaths.
These findings suggest that the upsurge of measles in Europe puts the WHO goal under severe threat. Since most of the infected patients were either unvaccinated or incompleted unvaccinated, it would seem that new vaccination policies are needed to target those most susceptible to the disease, both in the general population and in high risk groups, notes an editor in the same issue of the journal.
The situation in Europe affects other parts of the world. For instance in the USA in 2008, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cases of measles infection were at their highest since 1996, and many of them were either imported from or linked to people who travelled into the US from other countries, particularly from Europe.
