Deadly Romanian measles outbreak- Anti vaxx movement blamed

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An outbreak of measles in Romania has killed dozens of infants and children, with 200 new cases reported each week.

Doctors say the surge in the disease is fueled by the country’s low rate of vaccination. Some Romanian celebrities have waged media campaigns warning about the perils of immunization, and local superstitions such as keeping the vaccine-preventable disease at bay with cabbage juice or not cleaning one’s house have also exasperated doctors. Some doctors complain they don’t have sufficient stocks of vaccines.

Some 13,700 people in Romania have contracted measles since the epidemic began in 2016, and 55 have died, of whom only one had been immunized, according to the National Center for the Supervision and Control of Transmissible Diseases.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said the number of measles cases across the continent tripled last year, with Romania, Ukraine and Italy the worst affected.

Alexandru Rafila, a laboratory chief at the Matei Bals National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Bucharest, said this week that the highly contagious disease is spreading quicker in Romania because millions of its citizens work abroad, get exposed to different strains of measles and then return home