The World Health Organization voiced alarm Tuesday at the rapid spread of measles, with more than 306,000 cases reported worldwide last year—a 79-percent increase from 2022.
“We in the measles world are extremely concerned,” said Natasha Crowcroft, a WHO technical adviser on measles and rubella.
She stressed though that measles cases are typically dramatically under-reported, and that the real number was surely far higher.
To get more accurate figures, the UN health agency models the numbers each year, with its latest estimate indicating that there were 9.2 million cases and 136,216 measles deaths in 2022.
It’s also paradoxically driven by the success of the vaccines themselves. Some people think “what’s the point - when was the last time I heard of a kid dying of measles? It can’t be that serious.”