Disaster-affected populations are highly vulnerable to outbreaks of measles. Therefore, a mass vaccination against measles was conducted in Aila cyclone-affected blocks of West Bengal, India in July 2009. The objectives of the present report were to conduct an in depth analysis of the campaign, and to discuss the major challenges. A block level micro-plan, which included mapping of the villages...

Based on the mechanism and characteristics of measles transmission, we propose a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) measles epidemic model with vaccination and investigate the effect of vaccination in controlling the spread of measles. We obtain two critical threshold values, lc1 and lc2, of the vaccine coverage ratio. Measles will be extinct when the vaccination ratio l > lc1, end...

BACKGROUND Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease with a significant public health impact especially among displaced populations due to their characteristic mass population displacement, high population density in camps and low measles vaccination coverage among children. While the fatality rate in stable populations is generally around 2%, evidence shows that it is usually high amon...

Expanded access to measles vaccination was among the most successful public health interventions of recent decades. All WHO regions currently target measles elimination by 2020, yet continued measles circulation makes that goal seem elusive. Using Demographic and Health Surveys with generalized additive models, we quantify spatial patterns of measles vaccination in ten contiguous countries in t...

OBJECTIVE To highlight the complications involved in interpreting laboratory tests of measles immunoglobulin M (IgM) for confirmation of infection during a measles outbreak in a highly vaccinated population after conducting a mass immunization campaign as a control measure. METHODS This case study was undertaken in the Republic of the Marshall Islands during a measles outbreak in 2003, when r...

BACKGROUND Measles is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable death in Africa. Regional measles elimination is considered feasible using current vaccines and a series of WHO-recommended strategies. We aimed to interrupt transmission of measles, and to use case-based surveillance to show the effect of such interruption. METHODS In southern Africa from 1996, seven countries with a total popula...

Introduction Live further-attenuated measles vaccines were made generally available in the United Kingdom early in 1966 following the Measles Vaccine Committee's Report to the Medical Research Council (1966). Two years later the Ministry of Health (1968, Circular CM 05/68) through its Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization recommended that measles vaccination should be offered to all c...

From 1 January to 14 April 2011, a total of 155 measles cases were notified in Belgium, whereas throughout 2010, there were only 40. Of the 103 cases with known vaccination status, 87% had not been vaccinated with measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. The resurgence of measles is the consequence of insufficient vaccine coverage in previous years. Efforts to communicate the benefits of measles vaccinat...

We describe the global status of measles control and elimination, including surveillance and vaccination coverage data provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Since 2000, two doses of measles vaccine (MCV2) became recommended globally and the achievement of high vaccination coverage has led to dramatic decrease in the measles incidence. Our finding indicates that, in the Western Pacifi...