Following the news that the US, UK and France top UNICEF’s report of children unvaccinated against measles between 2010 and 2017, James Mather, Senior Pharma Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view:

“The number of children not receiving their first dose of measles vaccinations reported by UNICEF, particularly in high-income countries, is a public health emergency.

“From epidemiology data gathered by GlobalData, we calculate the figures reported by UNICEF translate into vaccination rates below 90%, which fall far below the WHO’s recommended threshold of 95% immunization coverage.

“Vaccination rates below 95% pose a serious risk that protection against measles is not adequate to protect against outbreaks of the highly infectious disease. This has proved true with recent outbreaks in the US and Europe. In Europe reported measles cases has more than tripled in first three months of 2019 compared to same period in 2018.”