The World Health Organization is urging Europe to step up measles vaccination efforts as countries report thousands of cases of the disease.
WHO’s regional office said Wednesday that cases in Europe and Central Asia fell by half from 2013 to 2014 but its goal of eliminating measles there this year is threatened.
It said seven countries have reported more than 22,000 cases since the beginning of last year — led by Kyrgyzstan with nearly 7,500 and Bosnia with 5,340. Russia and Georgia had more than 3,200 each and Italy more than 1,600. Germany has seen more than 570 cases.
WHO regional director Zsuzsanna Jakab says the region has seen a 96-percent reduction in measles cases over the past two decades and must act “without further delay to close immunization gaps.”
(AP)
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2 Responses
Europe? Blame ’em Orthodox.
We take the media’s warnings about climate change with more than a grain of salt. We wouldn’t allow the health department to tamper with Bris Milah. We were indignant when our mayor tried to limit the size of our soda bottles. We don’t want the government telling us how to live our lives or dictating when our elders should die.
So why do we have absolute faith in them when it comes to vaccination? The pharmaceutical industry backed media is using the 123 cases in California (out of a population of over 320 million) and now the lone measles case in Germany to launch a campaign against “anti-vaxers”. Their goal is to remove all religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccinations. This will be a huge financial windfall for the vaccine manufacturers. Childhood vaccinations are only the beginning. Health care workers and teachers are next in line with hundreds of vaccines being developed that will eventually be mandated for every man, woman, and child. We will also be forced to get vaccinated for diseases caused by an immoral lifestyle. (Two current vaccines fit that category; Hepatitis B which is mandatory and HPV which isn’t mandatory—yet.) Once we relinquish our freedom to choose, who knows what else will be forced upon us?
In the last five years that drug companies paid out over $19.2 billion for criminal and civil fraud alone; dare we trust that their motives are pure? So why is the frum community jumping on the bandwagon with the drug companies to push mandatory vaccination by vilifying the non-vaxxers and even calling on Yeshivos to bar unvaccinated children from attending. To assist the pharmaceutical industry in pushing their agenda when there is no scientific evidence that unvaccinated children spread disease or cause deadly epidemics (the measles outbreak is neither deadly nor an epidemic.) is enabling governmental tyranny.