PROGRESS TOWARD MEASLES ELIMINATION IN KYRGYZSTAN

Measles is one of the most severe infectious diseases of childhood, and one of the major causes of mortali-ty, especially in developing countries. Despite rare measles outbreaks in recent years, Kyrgyzstan seeks to show its commitment towards the global anti-measles campaign. The aim of this article is to summarize the scattered information on the recent status of measles, valid surveillance system, and measles elimination strategies in Kyrgyzstan, based on sources that include non-confidential but usually inaccessible governmental data. Infor-mation was extracted from the reports to the Ministry of Health and documents on the national surveillance system, in addition to outbreak cases extracted from the Republican Infectious Diseases Hospital’s archive. To tackle the worsening measles situation in Kyrgyzstan, the Ministry of Health established the Republican Center for Immunoprophylaxis in 1994. Measles related death, which was rampant up until 1992, has not been registered since 2000 due to improved routine vaccination coverage, increasing from 88% in 1994 to 97% and over in 1997. The national surveillance system was modernized thanks to the World Health Organization, helping to detect measles cases and prevent major outbreaks. The system identified 222 cases in the outbreak of 2011, and the case cards in the hospital provided the findings of 69 admitted cases (42 infants, 22 children aged 1 to 14 years, and 5 aged 15 years or over), including 32 severe cases. This article provides a whole view on measles in Kyrgyzstan, which would be useful to control measles worldwide.