Europe's Measles Cases Tripled Last Year

In recent years, measles has been experiencing a resurgence across Europe. Between 2016 and 2017, cases of the infectious disease increased 300 percent with 21,315 recorded in total. The World Health Organization has released new data showing how things developed between 2017 and 2018 and the news isn’t good. The number of cases tripled over those 12 months and the 82,596 total represents the highest number recorded this decade.

90 percent of those cases occurred in ten countries. Ukraine had the highest number by far – 53,218 – more than 10 times that of second-placed Serbia. The problem isn’t just confined to Eastern Europe and France (2,913) and Italy (2,517) are both on the list of the ten worst affected countries. Some countries have made progress in reducing their cases and Italy is one of them. It had 5,393 cases in 2017 and in 2018, that figure declined by nearly half. Romania is another example where there were just over 9,000 cases in 2017 and 1,087 reported in 2018.