Deaths from measles worldwide have almost halved in five years thanks to a concerted vaccination campaign focusing on Africa. “Our next target is a 90 per cent reduction by 2010, with 1999 as the baseline,” a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization told New Scientist. Progress in sub-Saharan Africa was most impressive, with deaths down 60 per cent.
Half a billion children were vaccinated during the campaign, which has cut the numbers of measles deaths from 871,000 in 1999 to 454,000 in 2004, the latest year for which information is available.
In parts of the developed world,…
