North ‘has no measles cases’

There are no cases of measles in the north, ‘health minister’ Hakan Dincyurek said on Thursday night.

Dincyurek was speaking after a total of six cases of measles were detected in the Republic in the first three months of the year, the most recent of which was a 15-year-old girl who was admitted to hospital in Limassol.

He added that “it is important to vaccinate all children at the recommended times, so children’s health and society can be protected.”

He said the “only way to prevent measles” is through vaccination, and that the increased spread of the disease in recent years has come about due to the Covid-19 pandemic, anti-vaccination movements, and wars in the world.

The measles vaccine is commonly given to young children in two doses while aged between one and four years old, with the north also running a programme to vaccine primary school students against measles should they have not been vaccinated earlier.

Earlier this month, the Makarios hospital’s paediatric department director Avraam Ilias said measles vaccine uptake in Cyprus is “somewhat low” at around 80 per cent, and that for the general population to be protected against the disease, vaccination coverage must reach 95 per cent.

He pointed out that the measles vaccine has in the past been erroneously linked with autism.

“This accusation was primarily made in the United Kingdom in 1999 by a study published by a gastroenterologist,” he said, saying the study had listed the MMR – measles, mumps, and rubella – vaccine to the developmental disability.

He added, “the publication was subsequently proven to be false, the journal which published it retracted it, and the gastroenterologist had his licence revoked.”

However, he noted, the damage in some quarters had already been done, and “many people were not vaccinated at the time, leading to an outbreak of measles in Europe and mainly in the UK.”

With this in mind, he drew parallels with the anti-vaccine movement which sprung up around the Covid-19 vaccines, which has led to a number of people refusing vaccines.