BAKU, Azerbaijan, December 22. The number of measles cases has slightly increased in Azerbaijan recently, an expert from the country's Health Ministry Tayyar Eyvazov told reporters, Trend reports.
He noted that measles cases in Azerbaijan may occur due to the penetration of the virus from outside, from another country.
"Since April 2023, the infection cases have been recorded in the country. However, if the population underwent vaccination, so there shouldn't have been any infections, even if brought from abroad. This shows that some people avoided vaccination, thus got infected," he explained.
Eyvazov noted that if children are vaccinated according to the vaccination schedule, there would be nothing to be alarmed about.
"Observing the current situation, we see that the great majority of those infected people are either those who have not received the vaccine or have been vaccinated only once," he added.
The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared Azerbaijan a country free of such diseases as measles and rubella since 2015 (no endemic cases have been registered in the country).
Despite the fact that the country has had two small localized outbreaks of measles infection in recent years (in 2014 and 2018), infection outbreaks were removed as quickly as possible thanks to the anti-epidemic and preventive measures.
Iinfection coming from neighboring nations, sporadic outbreaks (single outbreaks of measles) have been documented among the Azerbaijani population since April this year. Infection transmission has been reported primarily among children. During the previous period, the country recorded 284 instances of measles infection. Only 12 percent (35 patients) of confirmed cases were adults and the elderly.
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