According to a new report by the World Health Organization (WHO), Europe has the highest number of measles in Europe since 1997. There were 127,350 cases in 2024 – almost double the number from 2023.
“The measles is back, and this is a wake-up call,” Dr. Hans Henry P. Clous says, who is a regional director for Europe. “Without high vaccination rates, there is no health protection.” Last year, there were 38 deaths from measles.
The transmission is similar to Kovid, with respiratory drops and virus spreading among people with aerosol (airborne transmission). The infection produces a rash and fever in mild cases, and encephalitis (brain inflammation), pneumonia and blindness in severe cases.
Hospitalized people are hospitalized and death in hospitals, including death rates in developed countries, one to 5,000 measles cases in about 1,000.
Each person infected with measles, on average, will spread the virus between 12 and 18 others. It is more contagious than Kovid. For example, someone with an omiricon variant will spread the virus to about eight other people.
In 2022, WHO described measles as a “adjacent threat in every region of the world”. The comprehensive impact of Covid made people use healthcare, to reduce the capacity of regular health services, like vaccination, difficult to work properly.
These new Stark figures in Europe are an indispensable result of low vaccination rates. The measles is almost completely completely vaccine, with two doses provide more than 99% protection against infections. The vaccine has an excellent safety record, in which severe disadvantages are extremely rare.
The ratio of the population that must be vaccinated to keep the local transmission low and prevent outbreaks (the so -called “herd immune”) is approximately 95%.
Who highlighted some examples of Europe, where there are clear gaps in vaccine coverage. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Romania, less than 80% eligible children were vaccinated in 2023, with a rate of less than 50% for the last five or more years. Romania had the highest number of measles cases in Europe in 2024 – an estimated 30,692 cases.
Is incorrect information driver
Wrong information is an important factor that reduces the vaccine. For example, in the UK, former physician Andrew Wakefield presented false data in 2002, claiming vaccines of MMR (measles, kanthamala and rubella). He somehow received these claims published in the lensate – although the paper was later withdrawn.
This fake intimidation received continuous media coverage, resulting in a low increase in young children at the time and then in 2012, a major measles outbreak among teenagers was a major factor.
The claims have spread internationally. In 2020, an American population survey found that “18% of our respondents accidentally states that it is very or some accurate to say that vaccines cause autism”.
It is a matter of regret that wrong information about health can also be found at the highest level of the government. US President Donald Trump made frequent false claims during the Kovid epidemic, including suggestions that injections can be treated by injection to the disinfect. In 2025, he Robert F. Kennedy was appointed as Health and Human Services Secretary. Kennedy has long spied anti-vaccine approaches, which requires apologies to compare vaccination programs for Holocosts in 2015.
In a recent interview with Fox’s scene Hannie, Kennedy said about the MMR vaccine: “It causes death every year. It causes – it causes all the diseases that measles themselves cause, encephalitis and blindness, ET Sitera.”
This is untrue. Infectious Disease Society of America states that “there has been no death related to measles, kanthamala and rubella vaccine in healthy individuals”. This is between two measles deaths among uncontrolled people in the US since 2003, the first such deaths since 2003. It is estimated that measles vaccine stopped 94 million deaths globally between 1974 and 2024.
The US National Institute for Health, one of the largest funds of the world’s health research, announced on 10 March 2025 that it was conducting an ax research aimed at understanding and addressing the vaccine hesitation.
It is planning a major study in potential associations between the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) clearly between vaccines and autism, despite that dozens of studies indicate that there is no such link.
This instability matters to Europe from the US and other places. Trump and America have political supporters in Europe, so their messaging weighs and they can harm. The anti-vaccine spirit promoted on Facebook from within the US resulted in comments on the positions of many countries. The use of social media has been seen internationally to spread wrong information, for example, within Europe. Russian trolls are also included in arguing about vaccines.
There is an urgent need for outbreak which is to be brought back under control and for accurate information about vaccines to be important messages in public discussions. As Dr. Clus has said: “Khasra virus never rests – nor we can.”
(Author: Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, Southampton University)
Disclosure Statement: Michael Head has received funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Research England and UK Department for International Development, and currently gets funding from UK Medical Research Foundation
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