This article describesthe tremendous efforts made in the field of measles immunization in Saudi Arabia in the past 20 years, from the control phase to the elimination phase. Mandatory measles vaccination with one-dose Schwartz vaccine was introduced in 1982 by a royal decree, a step aimed at increasing vaccine coverage. In 1991, a two-dose schedule was implemented using Edmonston-Zagreb measles...

OBJECTIVE A previous measles outbreak investigation in a high school in Quebec, Canada identified 2-dose vaccine effectiveness of 94%. The risk of measles in 2-dose recipients was significantly higher (2-4 times) when measles vaccine was first administered at 12 versus ≥ 15 months of age, with no significant effect of the age at second dose. Generalizability of this association was also assesse...

The results of the retrospective analysis of data on vaccination coverage in the preschool-aged and school-aged Roma children (436 preschool and 551 schoolchildren) in three geographical regions of Slovenia were analyzed to establish the differences concerning coverage for specific vaccinations: poliomyelitis, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps and rubella between the two generation...

Data on uptake of the measles mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine in the United Kingdom are available through the COVER/Korner programme. 2 The programme measures uptake of the MMR vaccine for children resident in a district on the evaluation date who reached their second birthday during the previous quarter. Children are scheduled to receive the first MMR immunisation at 12 months of age. The late...

Elimination of indigenous measles from the United States has been a public priority since 1978. To assess the progress made toward this goal, we review the epidemiology of measles from 1963 to the present. From the 1970s through early into the recent measles epidemic, the majority of measles cases were in highly vaccinated, school-age children. This was due primarily to a 1 to 5% primary measle...

BACKGROUND Since the schools vaccination campaign in 1994, measles has been eliminated from England. Maintaining elimination requires low susceptibility levels to keep the effective reproduction number R below 1. Since 1995, however, MMR coverage in two year old children has decreased by more than 10%. METHODS Quarterly MMR coverage data for children aged two and five years resident in each d...

Despite long-standing two-dose measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination, measles outbreaks still occur in highly vaccinated European populations. For instance, large measles outbreaks occurred in France (2008–13), the United Kingdom (2012–13) and the Netherlands (2012). Based on a multicohort model approach, using spatial serological survey data, MMR vaccination coverage data and data on social ...

BACKGROUND China pledged to join the global effort to eliminate measles by 2012. To improve measles control strategy, the epidemic trend and population immunity of measles were investigated in 1951-2011 in Beijing. METHODS The changing trend of measles since 1951 was described based on measles surveillance data from Beijing Centre of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The measles vaccinati...

Despite vaccination coverage over 95%, a measles outbreak started in May 2013 in the Netherlands. As of 28 August, there were 1,226 reported cases, including 82 hospitalisations. It is anticipated that the outbreak will continue. Most cases were orthodox Protestants (n=1,087/1,186; 91.7%) and unvaccinated (n=1,174/1,217; 96.5%). A unique outbreak control intervention was implemented: a personal...