FLYING ATTACK

There is no doubt that health is the most valuable thing a human being has. Having fallen sick, you understand that the colours of the world start getting dim and life loses its meaning. Representatives of the human generation reasonably fear such terminal diseases as AIDS and cancer, but they do not even guess that diseases which seem harmless at first sight might have more terrible consequences for people.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 1.6m children die of various infections in the world every year. It must be noted that such diseases as measles and rubella are one of those infections that cause a lot of trouble for people. According to estimations of WHO experts, measles has one of the leading positions among causes of death, while rubella maims about 300,000 children in the world every year.

Vaccination against these infections was carried out in our country last year. However, at the beginning of this year there were reports that there had been cases of measles and rubella among secondary school pupils.

"Adult" consequences of "children's" infections

For many centuries, measles and rubella have been on the list of "compulsory" children's diseases, just like scarlet fever, pertussis and epidemic parotiditis (mumps).

It must be noted that measles and rubella are called children's diseases for the simple reason that in most cases, people contract them when they are too young. After recovering from the illness, people get strong immunity against these diseases. However, for adults who avoid measles and rubella in their childhood, it is much more difficult to recover from one of these infections. Infection expert Dr. Samir Jafarov says that measles is an infectious disease that is transmitted by an airborne route.

"One sick child can become a source of infection for many other children he contacts. By its infectiousness, measles is behind only chicken pox, but sharply surpasses it by its seriousness and by the number of complications. If a person who has not had measles and has not been vaccinated against it communicates with a sick person, the likelihood of him contracting it is 100 per cent. We would like to point out that the measles virus can remain in the environment for two hours, which is why it can be contracted even if a healthy person enters the room where a measles patient was present two hours earlier. The person becomes infected in 2-4 days before he has rash and continues to remain a source of infection during the entire acute period of the illness. The incubation period lasts two weeks on average and can fluctuate between 7-28 days. On the fifth or sixth day of the illness, the virus gets into the blood from the mucous membrane of the nasopharynx and affects almost all organs and tissues.

The first symptoms of the illness are a fever that can reach 40.5 degrees, the inflammation of the mucous membrane of the oral cavity and upper respiratory tract, conjunctivitis, as well as skin rash. What is really terrible is not the measles itself, but the complications that might emerge as a result of this disease. Serious types of measles might lead to the inflammation of the middle ear, lung fever and cause deafness, total blindness and heavy damage to the brain (encephalitis), as well as an acute form of diarrhoea that dehydrates the body, myocarditis and a sore throat.

Rubella, which is also called German measles, although it seems harmless, is also a very dangerous disease. In childhood, rubella appears to be only in the form of light rash, while it might cause complications for adults. The incubation period of rubella lasts about two or three weeks. In the last week of the incubation period, the sick person poses a danger of infection for people around him, but feels very well and may not be aware of his illness.

Rubella is regarded as infectious seven days before rash appears and for another seven or 10 days after it disappears.

If a pregnant woman contracts rubella, this might infect the fetus, and depending on the period of pregnancy when the illness is contracted, the fetus might develop a number of defects that might affect eyes (cataract, glaucoma, keratoleukoma), ears (deafness), cause defects in skull bones and brain (small brain, mental retardation), bones, internal organs (jaundice, liver expansion and myocarditis). For this reason, if rubella is detected, pregnancy is always artificially interrupted," Jafarov pointed out.

Vaccine - a guarantor of health

In order to prevent deaths from measles or rubella, it is necessary to vaccinate at least 80 per cent of the population of the planet. According to the WHO, the state of affairs with vaccination is worst of all in Africa. Less than 50 per cent of children were vaccinated in Burundi, Cameroon and Somalia in 1999. In order to avoid lethal outcomes and complications from measles and rubella, many countries have already introduced mandatory preventive vaccination against these diseases. The WHO has suggested that all countries analyze and adopt a programme to liquidate measles and rubella by 2010. We should point out that within the framework of the strategy "Health for everyone in the 21st century" in order to fight infectious diseases, the World Health Assembly has decided to reduce measles and rubella by 2010 and eradicate these diseases in the European region of the WHO. With the help of general mandatory vaccination, for example, the United States of America managed to eradicate these diseases almost completely. Vaccination against measles is carried out in the USA in a legislative order, and every child should be vaccinated before going to school.

There was a well-established system of immunisation under the Soviets. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the situation changed. Many children were not vaccinated against measles in the 1990s. In this regard, cases of measles and rubella have been growing in many countries of the CIS, including Azerbaijan. In our country, the overall number of such patients reached almost 10,000 in 2002-05. More than 50 per cent of the patients were people over 15.

Because of such a great number of sick people in our country, a decision has been made to exterminate these diseases, which is why we followed the example of countries where vaccination against measles and rubella is mandatory.

It must be remembered that free mass vaccination against these dangerous diseases started on 27 February last year and continued till 31 January 2007. The vaccination was organised with joint cooperation between the WHO, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Health, the Vishnevskaya-Rostropovich Foundation and UNICEF. The mass vaccination of the population was carried out in the country among people aged between 7 and 23, while people under 29 could be vaccinated in the capital, i.e. the age category in which these diseases are more frequent. We should note that before Azerbaijan such campaigns were carried out in Italy, Belarus, Moldova, Turkey, Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and a number of other countries. According to the schedule of vaccination, immunisation measures against measles, parotiditis and rubella were fulfilled by 95.3 per cent.

Such a large-scale action aimed at fighting these diseases was supposed to be completed with a doubtless victory over measles and rubella. However, there have been reports that measles is common among secondary school pupils. Minister of Education Misir Mardanov made a statement about this quite recently. He pointed out that these diseases are common mainly in schools with a weak heating system.

In order to find out how frequent cases of measles and rubella have been in Azerbaijan recently, we addressed the republican centre for hygiene and epidemiology. The deputy director of the centre, Svetlana Zmitrovich, said that if a disease like chicken pox is really very common among pupils, luckily we cannot say the same for measles. Zmitrovich stressed that if in January last year, 97 cases of measles and 33 cases of rubella were registered, immediately after the vaccination began, the number of sick people noticeably fell. According to our interviewee, the vaccination began in March last year, and if there were 49 cases of measles in March, in April there were only 13 and in May - only 9. This year not a single case of measles or rubella has been registered yet. "The best way of avoiding these diseases is to be vaccinated. However, during the immunisation a real campaign was launched against the vaccine and the media often carried articles on the negative consequences that this injection might allegedly have. As a result, although the vaccination covered, as was planned, a large proportion of the country's population, some citizens feared and decided not to be vaccinated. However, the combined vaccine against measles and rubella has been approved by the WHO. This guarantees its effectiveness and safety. It has been certified and is kept in special refrigerators," Zmitrovich pointed out.

Thus, it turns out that vaccination is the most effective way of avoiding measles and rubella. It is always necessary to remember that it is better to re-insure oneself than to underestimate the danger and endanger not just your own health, but also the health of people around you, because a sick person is a real source of infection.