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India was one of the 57 countries that witnessed large disruptive outbreaks of measles in 2023 and with 65,150 cases, the country was second only to Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the latest report by the World Health Organisation and US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Globally, the incidence of the infection has gone up by 20%, with 10.3 million measles cases recorded in 2023, according to the report.
The estimated number of measles deaths also increased globally by 8% over the previous year, with 107,500 deaths globally.
Measles is a contagious viral infection that causes fever, cough, runny nose, skin blotches and sore throat.
But, it can lead to severe complications such as brain swelling and death. The infection, however, is preventable with immunisation.
While individual estimates for India were unavailable, data from WHOs Southeast Asia region shows that MCV1 coverage levels had reached the pre-pandemic levels in 2022, but dropped slightly a year later.
MCV1 coverage stood at 94% in 2019, dipping to 87% in 2021 before increasing to 94% in 2022, but going down to 91% again in 2023.
The coverage for the second dose of measles containing vaccine (MCV-2) also dipped slightly in 2023 in the region as compared to the previous year, but still remained higher than the pre-pandemic levels.
The MCV-2 coverage stood at 83% in the region in 2019, which dropped to 79% in 2021, increased to 86% in 2022, and stood at 85% in 2023.
The report said that 22.2 million children globally missed their first dose of the vaccine, which was an increase of 2% as compared to the previous years.
And, while the individual country-wise coverage data was not present in the report, it said that two countries from the WHO Southeast Asia region were among the top ten countries with the highest number of infants that missed their doses.
Last year’s report said that an estimated 1.1 million children in India had missed their first dose of the vaccine in 2022. The government, however, said that the MCV-1 went up to 93% in 2023.