There is an "epidemic" of measles, global health leaders have warned, as cases of the potentially deadly disease appear to be on the rise. The World Health Organisation (WHO) urged parents to get their children vaccinated against the highly infectious disease.
It raised concerns that a dip in vaccination uptake during the Covid-19 pandemic could be behind a rise in cases compared to what would usually be expected in the first two months of the year. Problems with accessing care and questions over vaccination which arose during the pandemic could have led to fewer people getting the jab, it suggested.
Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's special envoy for Covid-19, told Sky News: "We've got really good vaccination programmes all over Europe to keep kids safe and one of them is the vaccination programme against measles, but it's been slowed down because Covid has really taken up so much of healthcare. And so we've got an awful lot of people who have missed out on measles vaccination - 73 million throughout the world.
