Measles: low uptake blamed on “incredulity and hostility” towards doctors

Around 169 million of the world’ children did not receive their first dose of measles vaccine between 2010 and 2017, an average of 21.1 million a year, shows the latest report from Unicef.1

Of the world’s high income countries, the US topped the list for the number of children who were not vaccinated in that time, with 2 593 000 missing out. France came second with 608 000, then the UK with 527 000.

In low and middle income countries the situation was much worse, the report said. In 2017 nearly four million children under the age of 12 months missed out on the vaccine in Nigeria—the highest number worldwide—then 2.9 million in India, 1.2 million each …