“Twenty-two countries and territories in the Western Pacific, including Japan and a number of small island nations, have eliminated measles and rubella,” reports The Doomslayer. Rubella is also known as German measles.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today announced that the 21 Pacific island countries and areas that are part of the WHO Western Pacific Region have collectively been verified as having eliminated measles and rubella. Japan too has achieved rubella elimination after it succeeded in eliminating measles. These significant achievements mark meaningful progress in protecting children and communities across the Region from these preventable diseases.
Verification of these achievements was carried out through a rigorous, globally standardized WHO process conducted by the Regional Verification Commission for Measles and Rubella Elimination.
By contrast, a child died from measles in Los Angeles last month. And there have been “recent measles resurgences” in other parts of the Pacific.
“Measles vaccination has saved 94 million lives globally since 1974. Of those, 92 million were children”, says Our World in Data. But measles vaccination rates have fallen in the U.S., and as a result, an unvaccinated child died this year in Texas.
After vaccination rates fell, whooping cough cases jumped 14-fold in Michigan, resulting in a few deaths. Many more people are getting the disease, which makes you feel awful, as if you are coughing your lungs out. For babies, the disease can be deadly. “Cases of pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough, have jumped 14-fold since 2023, alarming state health officials. As of Dec. 8, there were 1,578 confirmed cases of pertussis in Michigan, compared to 110 for the full year of 2023,” notes Scott Gottlieb, who served as FDA Commissioner in the first Trump administration.
