Only eight of 866 Sarajevo Canton residents who were diagnosed with measles since the beginning of the year were vaccinated, according to the Public Healthcare Institute.

From January 18 to August 23, the authorities recorded 866 cases, with the largest number of affected residents in the Sarajevo municipalities of Novi Grad and Ilidza, 317 and 169.

Of over 800 infected persons 799 were not vaccinated, 25 were those who did not get all necessary vaccines and only eight have undergone the full vaccination, with the children aged between two and five years being the most affected population.

Due to drastically low immunisation coverage in the Canton over the last years due to the refusal of parents to vaccinate their children, Sarajevo Canton Health Ministry and the Public Healthcare Institute have carried out a reform aimed to stop unacceptably low vaccination percentage among preschool children.

The reform resulted in the instant grow of the MRP 1 vaccination percentage for the age of 12 to 24 months, which reached 94%, while the MRP 2 vaccination percentage for the children aged between five to six years increased to 91.3%.

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