Teenage measles outbreak shows shortcomings in Japan's immunisation programme

An outbreak of measles in Japan has led to the closure of more than a hundred schools and universities in the past month and to calls for a new push to eradicate the virus completely. Japan is one of the few industrialised countries yet to eliminate the disease.

In 1978 Japan introduced a mandatory measles vaccination programme for preschool children. But mandatory vaccination stopped when the law was revised in 1994. Although vaccination rates remained at about 90%, according to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, this was short of the 95% coverage needed to eradicate the disease from the general population.

Nobuhiko Okabe, director of …