From January 22 to March 29, Sarajevo Canton’s Public Health Institute recorded 270 patients infected with measles, of which only one was vaccinated.

The most numerous group of patients (101) are children age two to five. Then come children, age one to two years, and children age six months to one year. The least numerous group of patients are people over the age of 45.

The immunisation coverage in Canton Sarajevo is considerably lower than needed for achieving collective immunity, and the coverage of the MMR vaccine has drastically declined in recent years, and not because of the shortage of vaccines, but because parents refuse to vaccinate their children, although immunisation against MMR is mandatory.

The UNHCR and World Health Organisation (WHO) warned Bosnian citizens to vaccinate their children, saying that vaccines are the safest, most effective and the only way of protection.

The most infected patients (256) were unvaccinated, five patients did not receive all their vaccines, and only one patient was fully vaccinated.

Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by the measles virus. It is an airborne disease which spreads easily through coughs and sneezes of infected people. Measles affects about 20 million people a year.

It is one of the leading vaccine-preventable disease causes of death. The risk of death among those infected is about 0.2 percent, but may be up to 10 percent in people with malnutrition. Most of those who die from the infection are less than five years old.