Health Check

Global measles deaths were already at a 23 year high in 2019 after several years of inadequate immunisation levels in a number of countries around the world. The coronavirus pandemic looks set to make matters worse. The World Health Organisation is worried that disruptions to measles vaccination programmes this year in Africa have substantially raised the risk of large outbreaks in many countries. Immunisation coverage needs to be maintained at 95% or more to keep measles suppressed. Too many babies have missed routine measles vaccination at 9 months and planned special immunisation campaigns in areas where the coverage was already too low pre-Covid had to be cancelled. We talk to paediatrician Ifedayo Adetifa at the Kemri Wellcome research programme in Kenya who’s been modelling outbreak scenarios in Kenya of this situation. The risk of large outbreaks of measles in Kenya is now much greater, and likely to be worse in other countries in the region. But mounting vaccination campaigns as soon as possible would