In 2000, more than 550,000 people died around the world of the measles virus. But the World Health Organisation announced in November that, thanks to a massive worldwide vaccination effort – more than 5.5 billion doses of measles vaccine given – that figure dropped to just 90,000 in 2016.
Measles is a nasty disease that can cause disability, brain damage, deafness, and death. It used to kill 1.3 million people around the world every year. Vaccination programmes, therefore, save 1.3 million lives every year. “Saving an average of 1.3 million lives per year through measles vaccine is an incredible achievement and makes a world free of measles seem possible, even probable, in our lifetime,” Dr Robert Linkins, of the Measles and Rubella Initiative, is quoted as saying on the WHO blog.
