Procedure for assessing risks of an infectious disease being imported and spread in the RF regions exemplified with measles in 2018

The authors describe a procedure for assessing risks of the measles virus being imported and spread in certain RF re-gions; they also give results of test risk assessment in 2018 in relation to the FIFA World Cup 2018. Risks of the virus being imported and spread in the country were assessed in accordance with a score estimation procedure aimed at assessing both internal and external risks. The procedure was developed basing on the document issued by the WHO “Rapid risk assessment for acute public health events. WHO-2012”. We detected risk factors that could make for the measles virus being imported and factors that made for secondary spread of the virus once it was imported. All the RF regions were assessed as per each factor and assigned into three categories, namely regions with high, average, and low risks of the measles virus being imported and spread. We visualized the results and presented them on maps. As per our research results, “risk territories” are RF regions located at the state borders as well as regions where epidemiologic surveillance over measles is inefficient and there hasn’t been sufficient immunization against the disease. These regions are Moscow city, Saint Petersburg, Voronezh region, Moscow region, Kaliningrad region, Samara region, Amur region, Rostov region, Sverdlovsk region, Krasnodar region, the Chechen Republic, Dagestan, Primorye, and Khabarovsk region. Applying risk assessment in epidemiology involves developing such a technique for examining and forecasting an epidemiologic situation which will allow determining influence exerted on them by risk factors. This procedure enables ranking problems as per their significance and minimizing or eliminating possible risks