Incidence of congenital rubella in Greece

doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7271.1287

BMJ 2000;321:1287 ( 18 November )

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Incidence of congenital rubella in Greece

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EDITOR $---$ Giannakos et al present data on the rubella epidemic in Greece in 1999.¹ They also question the main conclusionof our paper on the 1993 rubella epidemic in Greece that the incidenceof the congenital rubella syndrome had increased in 1993 comparedwith the pre-vaccination period owing to inconsistent immunisationpractices.²

Their first (indirect) argument is that their data on the 1999 epidemic "do not show a real increase in the incidence of congenitalrubella." This is clearly irrelevant as our conclusion pertainedto the 1993 epidemic. Besides, the rubella epidemic in 1999 wassmaller than that in 1993 by a factor of 5.3 in terms of reportedrubella cases (Y Tselentis, personalcommunication).

They comment that our data "do not confirm an increase because data from an active, retrospective surveillance system in 1993-4were compared with poor quality pre-existing data from passivesurveillance." Nevertheless, as mentioned in our paper on p 1465,an active . . . [Full text of this article]

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Incidence of congenital rubella in Greece has decreased: G Giannakos, M Pirounaki, and C Hadjichristodoulou
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