ARCHIVED - Infectious Diseases News Brief - April 27, 2012

Worldwide Measles Deaths Drops 74% In Ten Years

According to a study in The Lancet , WHO members made it their goal to reduce measle mortality rates by 90% before 2010. However, the authors, from Penn State University, demonstrate that measles mortality has fallen only 74%. The study, by Dr Peter Strebel from the Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals at the WHO in Switzerland and his team, which is published to coincide with WHO's World Immunization Week, shows that according to a 2007 report, the global goal to reduce measles deaths by 50% from 1999 by 2005 had been achieved. After the achievement, WHO members then agreed to pursue the even more ambitious target of a 90% reduction between 2000 and 2010. In 2002, in the Americas endemic transmission of measles virus was interrupted, with four of the remaining five WHO regions, i.e. all except Southeast Asia having set target dates to eliminate measles by 2020 or earlier. o evaluate the global measles progress towards the 2010 reduction goal, the researchers designed a new model, which in comparison with other models, objectively uses surveillance data to estimate both incidence and the age distribution of cases, accounts for herd immunity, and uses robust statistical methods to estimate levels of uncertainty. Estimations show that the global measles mortality dropped by 74% from 535,300 deaths in 2000 to 139,300 in 2010, in over three-quarters of all WHO regions, with the exception of the WHO Southeast Asia Region.

Source: Medical News Today 25 April 2012

Incidence of infectious diseases and survival among the Roma population: a longitudinal cohort study

Background: Roma ethnicity is greatly affected by tuberculosis (TB), AIDS, injecting drugs use (IDU) and imprisonment. Methods: We assessed the incidence of several health problems by means of a retrospective cohort study performed in Camp de la Bota, Barcelona (Spain). The 380 individuals included in the 1985 TB outbreak investigation were followed-up until 31 December 2008. One hundred ninety-two subjects (50.5%) were men and 188 (49.5%) women. Information sources included questionnaires taken at the time of this outbreak, a population census and other registries from Barcelona and Catalonia. Cox proportional hazards mixed models were employed in the multivariate survival analysis. Results: By the end of the follow-up, the survival rate was 79.4%; 50 persons (13.1%) had deceased and 28 (7.3%) had emigrated. The incidence of AIDS was 104 cases per 100 000 person-years of follow-up (pyf), IDU was 240 cases pyf, imprisonment was 642 cases pyf and that of TB was 91 cases pyf. Male survival was lower [hazard ratio (HR) 4.22], when the effect of family was taken into account, than when it was not taken into account (HR 3.67). Conclusions: High incidences of AIDS, TB, IDU, imprisonment and poor survival rates have been observed among Roma. Family was found to be an important factor influencing the survival rates: when not considered, the risk of death among men was underestimated.

Source: European Journal of Public Health April 2012, Volume 22, Issue 2