Measles infected nearly 10 million people last year and killed 140,000, mostly children, as devastating outbreaks of the viral disease hit every region of the world, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
In figures described by its director general as"an outrage", the WHO said most of the 2018 measles deaths were in children under five years old who had not been vaccinated.
The picture for 2019 is even worse, the WHO said, with provisional data up to November showing a three-fold increase compared with the same period in 2018.The United States has already reported its highest number of measles cases in 25 years in 2019, while Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece and Great Britain lost their WHO"measles-free" status in 2018 after suffering large outbreaks.Globally, measles vaccination rates have stagnated for almost a decade, the WHO said.
The WHO data showed there were an estimated 9,769,400 cases of measles and 142,300 related deaths globally in 2018. This compares to 7,585,900 cases and 124,000 deaths in 2017.
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