Measles: The continued threat of a preventable disease

Itzhak Matthai asks why measles continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people despite the availability of a simple and cheap solution and despite a marked global improvement over the last few years. Everyone knows about measles, but do we perhaps take it for granted, thinking it an unproblematic and easily avoidable issue? A disease most prevalent amongst young children between the ages of one to four, it is highly contagious - particularly in the four days before any sign of physical symptoms - and has been responsible for millions of deaths worldwide, mostly through the various complications it is liable to cause including hepatitis, conjunctivitis, encephalitis and severe respiratory infection (1). Thank goodness, then, for the measles vaccine, which costs around GBP 0.17 including safe injection equipment and has been... [read full story]