Aftershock of a Vaccination Gap: The Measles Epidemics in Tirana, 2018

¹Department of Chronic Diseases, Institute of Public Health, Tirana, Albania

²Biomedical and Experimental Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Medicine in Tirana, Albania

*Corresponding author: Gentian Vyshka, Faculty of Medicine, University of Medicine in Tirana, Albania, Tel: +355692828140; E-mail: [email protected]

Received Date: May 28, 2021

Published Date: June 30, 2021

Citation: Ulqinaku D, and Vyshka G. (2021). Aftershock of a Vaccination Gap: The Measles Epidemics in Tirana, 2018. Mathews J Immunol Allergy. 5(1):13.

Copyright: Vyshka G, and Ulqinaku D. © (2021). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

ABSTRACT

Tirana, capital of Albania, has seen an acute increase in the measles cases during 2018, with a total figure surpassing 1000 of patients. The outbreak happened while the country was only witnessing very few and isolated cases for several years, as to have officially declared the disease as eradicated. Several reasons might have led to the outbreak of this epidemic, with a clear vaccination gap in the years 1997-1998. Authors discuss this under vaccination as well as other factors detectable in this group of patients, such as a peak in the first-year age infants and the prevalent distribution in the suburban area of the city, actually inhabited from a large number of internally migrated people.

KEYWORDS: Measles; Epidemics; Outbreak; Undervaccination