Region countries with measles epidemic, Kosovo untouched so far

During the first three months of 2019, seven new cases of measles have been recorded in Kosovo. These are the data from the National Institute of Public Health, which suggests that there are no measles in the country this year.

Meanwhile, Northern Macedonia has declared a measles epidemic throughout the country.

According to the Commission for Infectious Diseases in Northern Macedonia, by the beginning of the year four victims of measles and another 961 have been infected, 60 percent of whom are outside Skopje. Infectious disease has most affected children.

The World Health Organization has also shown that by means of a communique, the number of measles reported worldwide in the first three months of 2019 has tripled compared with the same time last year.

Sali Ahmeti, infected at the Infectious Clinic at the University Clinical Centre of Kosovo, said there have been two measles cases this year that have sought medical assistance.

We haven't had a well-fated addition in 2019. There have been two cases that have asked us at the clinic for help, yet a total of what I know there have been seven cases of”, Ahmeti said.

There is a law in Kosovo that imposes on parents to vaccinate their children by the age of 18.

Faik Hoti, director of the Health Ministry's Information Department, at the same time a public health specialist, told Radio Free Europe that the Ministry of Health, the National Institute of Public Health, is drafting the extensive immunization programme, which is considered a success story because through this programme it is imposed on children to be vaccinated due to the nonproliferation of infectious diseases.

According to the Health Ministry, Kosovo has already reached over 95 percent of the vaccine.

The importance of this program becomes ever greater in view of the fact that in European countries, there have been epidemic outbreaks of public health. We haven't had an epidemic in Kosovo for several years since”, Hoti said.

He added that, in the course of time, epidemiologists from the National Institute of Public Health have appeared on the ground to vaccinate communities' children. RAE, considered to be unexplored as a result of the very frequent shift in their settlements.

At the same time, citizens feel that it is up to any parent to vaccinate children with the vaccination calendar and avoid disease and possible epidemics.

Miranda Kadriaj, says she's a mother of two girls and that vaccination is orderly, including that of measles, although there has been debate that this vaccine causes autism.

And despite having heard a lot of thoughts that children shouldn't be vaccinated, because it's causing autism, I as a mother vaccinated my daughter six months ago when she's even turned 1 and had the time of the vaccine against measles”.

This because I think the consequences are bigger unless children are vaccinated. Then I read that anti-fruit vaccine doesn't cause autism, Kadriaj said.

In 2017, there were 871 fruit cases in Kosovo, until 2018 was closed to 94 cases.

Infectologists say that for 16 years no fruit case had been presented in Kosovo until March 2017, when the first cases had even begun to appear. All this situation has occurred despite Kosovo's ranking among high percentages of vaccines.

Based on local authorities' data, the high percentage of vaccine has resulted in success until recently in prevention, decline, or even the disappearance of many diseases.

Many parents in some parts of the world are refusing to vaccinate their children after a study published in 1998, which has later been drawn as a lie, said that anti - measles vaccine causes autism in children.

The World Health Organization has repeated several times that the 1998 study has been manipulated and that there is no scientific fact proving that anti - fruit vaccines cause autism of children.

In Kosovo epidemiologists from the National Institute of Public Health say anti-Messity vaccines, according to all research done, have not proved to have side effects.

What we've been faced with in 2017 is precisely the result of children's non-excision, and there's been propaganda that anti - measles vaccine causes autism. All scientific research and references that are so far prove that there is no link between vaccines and autism. There is no scientific basis for side effects, rather it's an effective” vaccine, epidemiologist Isme Humlli told Radio Free Europe long ago.

We've had no fruit in Kosovo now and many years, and that's exactly the disincentive has caused this explosion that we've faced with fruit and doesn't mean that we're not going to face”, she points out.

Fruit is a viral infectious disease that can sometimes lead to serious health complications, including lung and brain infections.

The disease is said to be completely preventable if right time vaccines are taken.

According to WHO, Ukraine, Madagascar and India have scored the largest number of people affected by measles. Tens of thousands of people per million have been affected in these countries.

Since September, 800 people have died of measles in Madagascar.