Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Reduced vaccination and the risk of measles and other childhood infections post-Ebola

2015; American Association for the Advancement of Science; Volume: 347; Issue: 6227 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1126/science.aaa3438

1095-9203

Saki Takahashi, C. Jessica E. Metcalf, Matthew J. Ferrari, William J. Moss, Shaun Truelove, Andrew J. Tatem, Bryan T. Grenfell, Justin Lessler,

COVID-19 epidemiological studies

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has caused substantial morbidity and mortality. The outbreak has also disrupted health care services, including childhood vaccinations, creating a second public health crisis. We project that after 6 to 18 months of disruptions, a large connected cluster of children unvaccinated for measles will accumulate across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. This pool of susceptibility increases the expected size of a regional measles outbreak from 127,000 to 227,000 cases after 18 months, resulting in 2000 to 16,000 additional deaths (comparable to the numbers of Ebola deaths reported thus far). There is a clear path to avoiding outbreaks of childhood vaccine-preventable diseases once the threat of Ebola begins to recede: an aggressive regional vaccination campaign aimed at age groups left unprotected because of health care disruptions.