A total of 49,288 people, including 26,048 children, have been infected with measles in Ukraine since the beginning of 2019, the Ukrainian Health Ministry said in a statement on its website, citing the Public Health Center.
According to the statement, 1,935 people, including 900 children, were infected with measles on May 9-16.
The highest number of new measles cases was registered in Kharkiv region (358 infected people, including 93 children), Kyiv region (138 and 64 cases respectively), Ternopil region (119 and 76), Lviv region (112 and 80), and Kyiv (208 and 92) over the reference week.
As reported, the Ukrainian Health Ministry urged the health care departments in Rivne, Zakarpattia, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Chernivtsi regions, where the largest number of measles cases were reported, to tighten measures to counter the disease and increase the level of immunization.
The campaign to increase the number of vaccinated children will soon begin in Khmelnytsky region.
Similar vaccination campaigns took place in Lviv and Vinnytsia regions, where 20,000 and 12,000 schoolchildren respectively were vaccinated in February. Over 90 percent of schoolchildren are protected from measles in Lviv region at present.
As of May 8, 2019, Ukraine has had over 929,500 doses of vaccines against measles, mumps, and German measles manufactured in Belgium and the United States.
