Vaccine

AFP More than 50 cows, sheep and horses have died in France's most serious outbreak of anthrax in two decades, according to officials who have warned of a vaccine shortage.

Authorities in the mountainous Hautes-Alpes region of southeastern France said the infection, which can spread to humans and is deadly in its rarest forms, had spread to 28 farms since June.

Alarmed by the growing anti-vaccination sentiments among parents in recent years, Turkey's Health Ministry has taken action to reverse this potentially dangerous trend.

The number of people killed by measles in Romania reached 46 people after a 9-month-old baby from Constanza died today. The National Center for Infectious Diseases Surveillance reported that the baby was not vaccinated.

Prva TV reported this, adding that the child could not be vaccinated against the disease due to an auto-immune illness, and had spent the last three months at the Institute for Health Protection of Mother and Child in Belgrade.

The girl is the third child that died after contracting measles, and the 13th victim in all.

If the anti-vaccination trend gains pace, this may produce serious consequences, including an epidemic, warns Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ceyhan, a member of the immunization advisory board of the Health Ministry.

The number of families in Turkey who say they are against vaccination rose to 23,000 in 2017, up from just 183 in 2011, according to the head of the Turkish Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. 

The director of the Clinic for Infectious Diseases in Nis, Miodrag Vrbic, confirmed this.

According to Vrbic, the woman, who is the 11th victim, did not suffer from any chronic diseases before contracting measles.

The measles outbreak in Greece is showing no signs of abating as the number of cases has kept increasing in recent months, according to the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (KEELPNO).

In its latest monthly report, the center notes that 1,976 cases were recorded in the period stretching from early last May, when the outbreak started, until March 4.

After a sixth patient died from measles complications - a 4-year-old child who had not been vaccinated against the disease - Brnabic said that "all of this is happening because citizens listened to people who do not have any medical knowledge" - i.e., those campaigning against vaccination.

The child, who was not vaccinated against measles and who developed pneumonia, is officially the sixth victim of the infectious disease.

There have been 2,896 cases of measles in central Serbia and in Serb municipalities in Kosovo since October, with 1,448 cases confirmed in Torlak Institute's laboratories.

The youngest patient was 15 days old, while the oldest was 65.