Measles in the Ukraine

A measles outbreak was recently reported in the western portion of the Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Health confirmed that more than 1,000 people have possibly been infected in the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn regions. Several cases have been reported in the capital of Kiev, but so far less than a dozen have been confirmed. A top health ministry official nevertheless said that it was still too early to talk about the existence of an epidemic.The ministry has alerted the country’s west and central regions, as well as the capital. In mid-December, Ukrainian First Deputy Health Minister Raisa Moiseyenko warned that she expected the number of measles cases in the country to grow dramatically. She also said that public health officials had begun anti-epidemic activities in the areas where the illness was expected to take hold. The Ukrainian deputy health minister said that the increase in measles cases is due to a rising incidence of measles throughout Europe and the country’s failure to enact a large-scale immunization plan for adolescents and young people in 2008.