If the U.S. had Samoa’s current level of measles cases, there would now be more than 7 million infected Americans

This article appeared in The Washington Post. Read the full story here.

The expanding measles outbreak in Samoa that has so far killed at least 63 people comes amid a global surge in new cases, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week.

According to estimates, more than 140,000 people worldwide died of the disease last year — an “unacceptable number,” according to Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director, and the highest death toll in years. Preliminary estimates for this year indicate even higher figures.

In 2018, most fatal cases struck children younger than 5, the organization said, as fewer than 70 percent of children worldwide were estimated to have received a second dose of measles vaccine last year. A ratio of 95 percent would be needed to prevent the disease from spreading.

“The fact that any child dies from a vaccine-preventable disease like measles is frankly an outrage and a collective failure to protect the world’s most vulnerable children,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, was quoted as saying in a release.

On top of that, a number of countries that used to be considered measles-free saw new sustained outbreaks in recent years, including Venezuela, Brazil, Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece and Britain.

But 2018′s surge to almost 10 million cases is driven by a smaller number of global hot spots, as measles is affecting some parts of the world far more intensely than others, the WHO said Thursday.

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen the worst impacts of the disease. Four out of the five countries that accounted for almost half the world’s measles cases last year — Congo, Liberia, Madagascar and Somalia — are in that region. The fifth is Ukraine, where a major outbreak began in 2017.

With a population of only about 200,000, Samoa has been similarly struck by the disease. Government authorities on the island nation said there have so far been 4,357 measles cases in this outbreak, which was officially declared Oct. 16. If the United States had Samoa’s current level of measles cases, there would now be more than 7 million infected Americans.