Measles and rubella monitoring, July 2015
Measles and rubella are targeted for elimination in Europe by 2015. ECDC closely monitors progress towards interruption of endemic transmission of both diseases through enhanced surveillance and epidemic intelligence. Measles and rubella vaccinations are routinely delivered as trivalent measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine in Europe, and the first of the two recommended doses is normally given during the second year of life.
Executive Summary
In the past 12 months, from July 2014 to June 2015, 4 224 measles cases were reported by 30 EU and EEA countries according to ECDC's quarterly monitoring report.
The number of cases of measles in the EU was low compared to recent years. This is most likely due to the impact that recent epidemics had on population immunity levels in EU/EEA Member States, i.e. the number of susceptible individuals within populations dropped. However, the number of cases is still high, particularly considering that measles and rubella are targeted for elimination in Europe this year. Data from the World Health Organization show that coverage rates in 22 EU and EEA countries are below 95 percent coverage target.
Since the previous report, outbreaks of measles have been detected in several countries in the WHO European Region: Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Denmark, France, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Germany accounted for 58.2% of the cases reported during this period.
Outside of Europe, measles outbreaks are reported from Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Iraq, Malaysia, Mali, Peru, South Sudan, Sudan and Taiwan.
Rubella
Twenty-eight EU/EEA countries reported a total of 2 808 rubella cases during the period July 2014 to June 2015.
In 18 of the 21 countries reporting consistently, the rubella notification rate was less than one case per million population, including 11 countries reporting zero cases during the 12-month period.
Poland accounted for 93.9 percent of all reported rubella cases in the 12-month period. Data were reported in an aggregated format. The highest number of cases was observed in 5–9- and 1–4-year-olds; 28.5% of the cases were unvaccinated. However, this figure needs to be interpreted with caution as only 37 cases were confirmed through laboratory testing.
No outbreaks of rubella have been detected by epidemic intelligence since the last report.