IRELAND HAD the second-highest incidence rate of measles in Europe in the first quarter of this year, according to new figures published by the European Centre for Disease Control.
The highest incidence was in Bulgaria, where 11 children died from measles in the first three months of 2010.
Some 280 cases of measles were reported in Ireland during the same period and almost one-third of these had to be hospitalised. No deaths were reported here.
The number of cases of measles in Ireland continued to rise during April and May. At the end of last month, some 355 cases of measles had been reported so far this year, some 15 times more than over the same period last year.
Dr Suzanne Cotter, public health specialist with the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, said the high figure for Ireland in the first part of this year was accounted for by an outbreak of measles that had been ongoing since about August last year.
“The outbreak has caused an enormous amount of disease in the community relative to our population size,” she said.
Dr Cotter said that although the measles outbreak here had been in decline in recent weeks, the fact that there were any cases was of concern when it was preventable with vaccination.
She said when the cases reported here were assessed, the main reasons behind them were that the individuals had not been vaccinated at all or had only had one dose of the MMR vaccine.
Two doses are required for maximum protection and these are normally given at age 12 months and age four or five years.
While vaccination rates in young children have improved over the past few years, they plummeted after the publication in 1998 of a flawed study linking the MMR vaccine with autism.
The prestigious medical journal the Lancethas since retracted the article and its author Dr Andrew Wakefield was recently struck off the UK medical register.
Many of the children and teenagers who missed out on vaccinations after that paper was published succumbed to measles during the recent outbreak. Some other cases were in babies too young to have been vaccinated.
Dr Cotter urged parents to check and make sure their children got two doses of the MMR vaccine. She said they could check with their GP or on their child’s vaccination card and, if they were unsure of their child’s MMR vaccination status, they should arrange to get two doses of the vaccine, which was free.
“It won’t do any harm,” she added, even if they had already had the vaccine.
She said some people also missed out on reminder notices about the second jab when they moved house. A high proportion of cases in the recent outbreak were among the Traveller community, who may have moved and missed out on notices about second doses of the vaccine as a result.
In total, more than 12,000 measles cases were reported from 32 European countries in the first three months of this year, a sixfold increase on the same period last year. More than 10,000 cases were reported in Bulgaria and more than 700 cases in France.
Ireland was next with nearly 300 cases, but given its population size, the report said it had the second-highest incidence rate in Europe at 6.12 cases per 100,000 population.