Dr. Aurora Stenescu, National Measles Surveillance Coordinator for the National Institute of Public Health, sounded the alarm Wednesday night on Medika TV about the decline in MMR vaccinations among children. The doctor says that against the background of the anti-vaccination trend that appeared in Romanians from 2010 to 2011, the number of those who vaccinate their children has decreased sharply, News.ro quotes.

“Measles is a highly contagious acute viral infection with a very high potential for population spread, it is an airborne disease, and currently the most effective public health measure to help us prevent the disease is vaccination,” said Dr. Aurora Stanescu on Medika TV.

In our country, vaccination against measles was introduced into the national program back in 1979.

At the moment, the national scheme provides two doses of the combined vaccine against measles, rubella, mumps, or MMR for short.

“After the introduction of vaccination, the burden on the health care system has decreased dramatically in the sense that morbidity and mortality have decreased significantly, because the development of measles can have severe complications or even death,” says the doctor.

Aurora Stanescu explained that MMR vaccination rates have decreased significantly in recent years.

“The level of vaccination coverage after the introduction of these measures in our country was very high, until 2010-2011, that is, about 97 percent. I said that measles is a highly contagious disease that can be controlled with a very high vaccination coverage rate of over 95 percent.”

Vaccination dropped to 83.40%

Romania achieved high coverage rates until the 2010s, but since then, as a result of the penetration of anti-vaccination currents into our country, they began to decline and gradually fell below 95-90 percent and so on, until the lowest vaccination rate was reached in 2022 with the first dose, a little more than 80 percent, more precisely 83.40 percent, explains the specialist.

The WHO recommends a target level of vaccination against this disease of somewhere between 95-98 percent, if possible even more. Out of 100 vaccinated people, 2-3 people may remain unvaccinated to stop transmission in the population.

Stanescu also added that during the Covid pandemic, the MMR vaccination has also decreased significantly, and now we have reached 9,000 cases and 9 deaths.

“In the years of the pandemic, vaccination coverage decreased even more, and this was primarily due to the measures introduced by the preparedness regime. This progressive decline in vaccination coverage, exacerbated by the pandemic, led to a renewed measles epidemic with nearly 9,000 cases and 9 deaths.

More than 90 percent of measles cases occur among unvaccinated individuals. The vast majority of deaths occur at a young age, in unvaccinated people. The vaccination scheme involves 2 doses, the first at the age of 1 year and the second at the age of 5 years.

Parents should try to believe in the benefits of this vaccination, as most unvaccinated children are due to parents’ refusal to vaccinate their children. This decrease in confidence in the benefits of vaccination was facilitated by anti-vaccination currents that began to penetrate our country in 2010-2011. Added to this decrease in parents’ trust were false studies on the side effects of this vaccine, things that were later dismantled,” Aurora Stanescu also stated.

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