Baku, January 18 (AZERTAC). The world has come a long way since George Bernard Shaw fulminated against vaccination in the 1920s. Vaccines are now widely regarded as an effective and cheap tool for improving health. Children in all countries are routinely immunized against major diseases, and the practice has become a central plank of global public health efforts. Despite these advances, however, immunization coverage remains far from universal, and the developing world in particular remains vulnerable to vaccine-preventable illnesses. Vaccination against measles also falls short; the disease caused 660,000 deaths in 2002.

In all, 3 million people die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases. Since the launch of the World Health Organization’s Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in 1974, the number of reported measles deaths has dropped from 6 million to less than 1 million per year.

The Measles and Rubella Initiative is global partnership committed to ensuring that no child dies from measles or rubella or is born with congenital rubella syndrome (CRS), which can be fatal also.

Since 2001 the initiative has supported the delivery of more than 1 billion doses of measles vaccine and helped raise measles vaccination coverage to 85% globally. As a result, worldwide measles deaths have been reduced by 71%. These efforts have contributed significantly to a reduction in overall child mortality, per Millennium Development Goal 4.

The initiative-supported measles immunization campaigns increasingly include other lifesaving health interventions such as the provision of Vitamin A supplements, deworming medicine, and insecticide-treated bed nets for malaria prevention. Through technical and financial support, the Measles and Rubella Initiative has helped 80 countries improve their routine immunization coverage, conduct successful measles and combination measles-rubella campaigns, and strengthen surveillance and laboratory networks.

The initiative aims to further reduce measles deaths by 95%, achieve the rubella and CRS elimination goals by 2015, and eliminate measles and rubella in at least five of six World Health Organization (WHO) regions by 2020.

The rise in measles cases around the world has changed the recommendations for measles vaccination in the U.S. While children routinely get their first MMR vaccine at 12 months and a booster dose at 4 years, if they are traveling overseas, infants should get their first dose as young as six months of age. Children who are at least 12 months old should get two doses of MMR, separated by at least 28 days.