MEASLES IS A CURRENT PUBLIC HEALTH THREAT

Abstract

Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease controlled by immunoprophylaxis, but despite existing effective and safe measles vaccines, it remains a public health problem.

Purpose of the study: review of publications on the problems of measles incidence in the world and applied vaccine prevention strategies.

The search strategy included a search of literature sources on the research topic in the electronic library databases Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, e-library, PubMed in Russian and English. The search depth was 10 years: from 2014 to 2023. The search for full-text articles was carried out using the keywords: measles, epidemiology, morbidity, vaccination coverage, measles outbreaks. Articles were classified according to their general themes and summarized. Publications devoted to clinical symptoms, treatment and complications of measles, as well as articles reporting clinical cases and abstracts of reports were excluded from the study. A total of 42 publications were analyzed, of which 25 articles corresponded to the objectives of the study.

An analysis of the references on the problems of measles incidence in the world and the vaccine prevention strategies used showed that the risk of contracting measles varies depending on the region, the availability of vaccines and health services; the importation of cases from neighboring countries, high levels of population migration, and the unstable geopolitical situation in the world contribute to the spread of measles; the reasons for the decline in measles vaccination coverage are the low level of responsibility of the population, medical exemptions, refusals of vaccinations for various reasons and the lack of information about vaccination among those arriving from other regions and the introduction of restrictive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated the problems in carrying out specific prevention against measles.