The correlation between measles vaccination rate of children in Poland and incidence rate of this disease from 1998 to 2017 and in Italy from 2012 to 2017

Sokół Dorota, Dobrzyński Michał, Standyło Arkadiusz, Skubel Tomasz, Czarnota Jakub, Piecewicz-Szczęsna Halina. The correlation between measles vaccination rate of children in Poland and incidence rate of this disease from 1998 to 2017 and in Italy from 2012 to 2017. Journal of Education, Health and Sport. 2018;8(9):1264-1269 eISNN 2391-8306. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1432576 http://ojs.ukw.edu.pl/index.php/johs/article/view/6063 https://pbn.nauka.gov.pl/sedno-webapp/works/878661 The journal has had 7 points in Ministry of Science and Higher Education parametric evaluation. Part b item 1223 (26/01/2017). 1223 Journal of Education, Health and Sport eissn 2391-8306 7 © The Authors 2018; This article is published with open access at Licensee Open Journal Systems of Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (s) and source are credited. This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non commercial license Share alike. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper. Received: 02.08.2018. Revised: 18.08.2018. Accepted: 21.09.2018. The correlation between measles vaccination rate of children in Poland and incidence rate of this disease from 1998 to 2017 and in Italy from 2012 to 2017 Dorota Sokół, Michał Dobrzyński, Arkadiusz Standyło, Tomasz Skubel, Jakub Czarnota, Halina Piecewicz-Szczęsna Chair and Department of Epidemiology and Clinical Research Methodology, Medical University of Lublin Corresponding author: Halina Piecewicz-Szczęsna, e-mail: halpiec@wp.pl ORCID ID Dorota Sokół: orcid.org/0000-0003-2059-7951 Michał Dobrzyński: orcid.org/ 0000-0002-1416-6568 Arkadiusz Standyło: orcid.org/0000-0002-5154-4759 Tomasz Skubel: orcid.org/ 0000-0001-7572-401X Jakub Czarnota: orcid.org/ 0000-0003-2783-0349 Abstract Introduction. Measles is a highly contagious disease capable of inducing epidemics, which strike every 2 to 3 years. Before implementing the vaccine in 1963 measles was devastating communities leading to 135 million of victims and 6 million died because of the disease around the world. Nowadays in Europe we observe a disturbing rise of the measles incidence rate and even deaths from the disease. The epidemiologic analysis will allow to draw attention to how important and prevailing this problem is in the polish health care system. The aim of the study is to analyse the current epidemiologic situation concerning the relationship between the vaccination and incidence rate of measles in Poland from 1999-2017 and Italy from 2012-2017. Materials and methods. The data used for the epidemiologic analysis was taken from “Choroby zakaźne i zatrucia w Polsce” and “Szczepienia ochronne w Polsce” reports conducted by the National Hygiene Institute. Moreover data from the World Health Organization reports. Results. The dropping immunization rate among children correlating with a more frequent measles outbreaks in the last years is disturbing. Immunization rate for the basic dose and booster dose for Poland is about 94% and for Italy about 92% (2017 data). Incidence rate totals respectively 8,4 per 100 thousand for Italy and 0,16 per 100 thousand for Poland. Conclusions. We need to draw parents attention to the fact that measles is still a huge and real threat. We also need to educate them that the most effective way to protect their children from getting sick is the vaccine. Moreover, awareness in society regarding the herd immunity must be increased because the contagious diseases like measles are the most dangerous to people who cannot be vaccinated. Keywords: measles, epidemic, vaccines, herd immunit