Five Measles Cases and MMR Coverage of Only 62 Percent - Yet Klekovski Says: No Compulsory Measures

A baby from Veles, infected with measles. At the Veles Health Centre they don't need a long explanation. "This is the result of a gap in herd immunity. We have the lowest MMR vaccine coverage in the last 10 years," says Dr Marina Todorovska, head of the preschool prevention and vaccination service.

The numbers from the Veles region are hard to read. In the first half of this year, MMR coverage among preschool children was only 50.8%, down from 68.5% last year. Among school-age children, in the first nine months, coverage is 87%.

Nationally the picture isn't much better. Five measles cases have been registered so far: three small children, a 45-year-old man and one person from Kosovo. The latest confirmed case is a child aged a year and a half. The director of the Institute of Public Health, Marija Andonovska, warns that vaccination coverage stands at 62 percent and that there is a real danger of a new epidemic.

The comparison that frightens

"In 2018 we had a measles epidemic, and that was with higher vaccination coverage of 74.8 percent. Even so, there were 800 hospitalisations and four deaths," Andonovska recalls. Today coverage is almost 13 percentage points lower. As one of the culprits behind the distrust she points to disinformation on social media - under posts by health institutions, she says, people claim they are "paid".

And the state's answer? Health minister Sašo Klekovski says there will be no campaign of compulsory measures, because in the past they proved counterproductive to some extent. When a journalist noted that refusing kindergarten admission to children without MMR is not a compulsory measure but a legal obligation, Klekovski replied: "You know that was being circumvented."

That may be the most honest sentence in the whole story. The law exists, and the minister publicly admits it is being circumvented - and instead of saying who was circumventing it and how that will be stopped, the topic is closed. Appeals to parents' conscience matter. But can a state that knows its own law is being dodged really just appeal?

The minister's practical advice: if you have symptoms, don't go straight to a health facility, call a doctor first, because the waiting room is the biggest risk for spreading the virus. So far no one is hospitalised, and one clinical hospital has received guidelines for admitting babies. There is enough vaccine, they say in Veles, and parents can come any working day, even without an invitation.