How deep mistrust of vaccines in Ukraine has allowed measles to grow into an epidemic by kkelland and Pavel Polityuk
LONDON/KIEV - Many of the people coming to Anna Kukharuk’s private medical clinic don’t have a disease. What plagues them is doubt. But its effects are a health emergency that the doctor and hundreds of others are struggling to remedy.
Pockets of dissenters in many communities have long shunned immunization. In Ukraine, more and more parents are questioning or delaying their children’s shots. Their doubts are rooted in a weak healthcare system, corruption and mistrust of authority. Magnified by rumors on social media, the doubts have transformed the country into a weak spot in efforts to shore up global immunity against infectious diseases, public health specialists say.
Kukharuk and other clinicians say even their medical colleagues argue vaccines weaken immunity. There is no evidence for such beliefs; decades of science show the opposite. The young doctor is part of a network of unpaid volunteers in a Ukrainian pro-vaccination campaign sponsored by charity Rotary International - many of them women, many also mothers - who put themselves forward to persuade people to get vaccinated.
Volunteers organize meetings to tell unvaccinated adults, parents, teachers, health workers and others about the risks of infectious diseases. In her clinic, Kukharuk directs visitors to WHO data which says vaccines save up to 3 million lives a year. Immunization rates need generally be around 95% to achieve the ‘herd immunity’ that can protect whole populations, the WHO says.Measles is more contagious than flu, tuberculosis or Ebola. The virus that causes it lingers in the air and on surfaces for more than an hour after an infected person has moved on; so in an unprotected population, each infected person, on average, would pass it to 12 to 18 others, virologists say.
In 2008, a 17-year-old boy died shortly after being given a measles-rubella vaccine. The government suspended the immunization program to investigate. It found no link to the boy’s death. But by then, health officials say, the damage to public confidence was done. On one visit, she recalled a student telling her, “My professor said ... the complications from vaccines are worse than the diseases.”
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