Progress toward global measles control and elimination, 1990-1996.

In 1989, the World Health Assembly resolved to reduce measles morbidity by 90% and measles mortality by 95% by 1995, compared with disease burden during the prevaccine era. By 1996, the estimated incidence and death rates for measles worldwide were reduced by 78% and 88%, respectively. In 1990, the World Summit for Children adopted a goal of vaccinating 90% of children against measles by 2000. However, routine measles vaccination coverage has remained relatively stable since 1990, and an estimated 1 million children continue to die from this preventable disease each year. During the 1990s, the widespread use of innovative measles-control strategies in the Region of the Americas and countries such as Mongolia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom demonstrated that high-level measles control and even interruption of transmission is feasible over large geographic areas. This report updates the status of measles control and elimination worldwide and includes disease surveillance and vaccination coverage data received by the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, as of August 29, 1997. These findings indicate that, in some regions, substantial progress has been made to control and interrupt measles transmission; in others, measles continues to cause high morbidity and mortality because of failure to implement measles-control strategies.