More than 2,000 measles cases were reported in the latest update from the Center for Public Health of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

Image/thedigitalway via pixabay

During the week ending Apr. 20, health authorities saw an additional 2,141 cases of measles–1,106 adults and 1,035 children. This brings the outbreak total for 2019 to 41,640 people – 19,271 adults and 22,369 children.

In addition, one more individual died bringing the measles death toll to 15since the beginning of the year.

Kharkiv (290 patients: 216 adults and 74 children), Ternopil (219: 57 adults and 162 children), Kiev (187: 116 adults and 71 children), Lviv (161: 41 adult and 120 children) regions, and in Kyiv (170:88 adults and 82 children) regions saw the most cases during the week.

Since this outbreak began in the summer of 2017, more than 100,000 measles cases have been reported in Ukraine, including 35 deaths.

Health officials remind once again that for reliable protection against measles, all children must receive both the first and second dose of measles vaccine in a timely manner.


Some people may suffer from severe complications from measles, such as pneumonia and encephalitis:

  • As many as one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children.
  • About one child out of every 1,000 who get measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain) that can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability.
  • For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.

In addition, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE) is a very rare, but fatal disease of the central nervous system that results from a measles virus infection acquired earlier in life. SSPE generally develops 7 to 10 years after a person has measles, even though the person seems to have fully recovered from the illness.

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