According to Bulgaria’s national consultant on microbiology, Professor Todor Kantardzhiev, children under the age of one-year-old should not be brought to Greece, Romania or Serbia for fear of contracting measles.
Just last week, Greece made the list as being one out of seven countries reporting over 1,000 cases of measles outbreak since the beginning of 2018.
During the first six months of the year, the Greece saw a total of 2,238 cases recorded, according to Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
On August 30, Kantardzhiev said while speaking during a television interview, that the number of measles cases have more than doubled year-on-year.
“This is not happening because of the anti-vaccination campaigns because there are not many anti-vaccination movements in Western Europe and they are not that vocal, just as in Bulgaria. The problem is in the incomplete vaccination coverage – quite large groups of Europe’s population economically migrate and the children remain unvaccinated,” the professor said according to sofiaglobe.com.
The other top seven countries that have seen “a dramatic increase” in cases of measles in Europe, according to the WHO include France, Georgia, Italy, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.
Of the countries, Ukraine reported the most cases of measles, with 23,000 people infected in the first six months of 2018.
In Europe, there were 41,000 cases reported for the first half of the year, involving both children and adults who have been infected with measles.
Ways of preventing the increase in measles cases is by implementing increased surveillance and immunization rates, the WHO explained.
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