In the last week, a number of 791 new cases of measles were registered all over the country, and a one-year-old child died of the disease, according to the National Institute of Public Health (INSP).
Measles epidemic, all over the country
Since the beginning of this year, there have been 17 deaths due to measles, according to INSP. In the last week, a child aged one year and six months died from infection with this virus, although he did not report any other known comorbidities. The child had been vaccinated with one dose of MMR at the age of 12 months.
In the first half of this year, a number of 17,378 cases of measles were reported and confirmed by INSP in all the counties of the country but also in the Municipality of Bucharest.
The most cases of illness were reported in the counties of Brașov, Mureș and Bucharest, where their number was 2,031, 1,213 and 1,620, respectively.
Between December 6, 2023 and June 2, 2024, according to the data extracted from the RENV, 164,715 doses of MMR vaccine were used, of which 27,058 doses were used for children aged between 9 and 11 months.
UNICEF comes with a grim warning regarding this childhood disease: Romania ranks first in Europe in terms of the number of deaths caused by measles and the number of cases is growing rapidly throughout the continent.
Measles cases recorded in the first three months of this year almost equaled the total number of illnesses reported throughout last year. Specifically, according to UNICEF, in the first three months of the year, 56,634 cases of measles and four deaths were officially reported. It happened in 45 of the 53 countries in the European region of the World Health Organization.
And the alarming figures do not stop there. During the entire year 2023, 61,070 measles cases and 13 deaths were reported in 41 countries. According to data from the World Health Organization, last year, 3,497 cases of measles and three deaths were registered in Romania. We are talking about a quarter of the deaths recorded in the whole of Europe. This is the reason why last December the Ministry of Health declared a measles epidemic. The decision was also made to make it possible to vaccinate children between the ages of 9 and 11 months, as well as to recover those who are not vaccinated or with an incomplete vaccination schedule.
