LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Measles cases in England and Wales rose by more than 70 percent in 2008 from the previous year, mostly because of unvaccinated children, government health officials said on Friday. The number of reported measles cases in England and Wales rose to 1,348 in 2008, from 990 a year earlier, Britain's Health Protection Agency said. At the same time, the number of children who have received their first dose of the vaccine by their second birthday has risen to about 80 percent. But that is still well below the 95 percent vaccination coverage needed to confer so-called herd immunity to people in the general population who do not receive the vaccines. The third straight annual rise also underscores the lingering impact of a since-discredited 1998 study linking the combined measles, mumps and rubella shot to autism -- a claim that made many parents refuse to get their children vaccinated. "There are still many children out there who were not vaccinated as toddlers over the past decade and remain unprotected," Mary Ramsay, an immunisation expert at the agency, said in a statement. "Unfortunately this means that measles, which is highly infectious, is spreading easily among these unvaccinated children." Although many people view it as a relatively harmless childhood virus, measles kills about 250,000 people a year globally, mostly children in poor nations. Parents' refusal to have their children vaccinated has caused a rise in measles cases in the United States and parts of Europe in recent years. In January, researchers reported that too many children remain unvaccinated against measles for Europe to have any realistic hope of eliminating the disease by 2010, citing Romania, Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Italy as countries with some of the lowest vaccination coverage. Many studies have debunked the notion that vaccinations can cause autism, and public health experts agree that immunizations save millions of lives every year. (Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Dominic Evans)
A Bulgarian farmer smokes a cigarette during a protest near the ferry link at the Danube border town of Oriahovo, some 180 km (111miles) north-east of the capital Sofia, February 4, ...
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