An ongoing measles outbreak linked to a suspected imported case, Ireland, April to June 2016

Barrett, Peter; Chaintarli, Katerina; Ryan, Fiona; Cotter, Suzanne; Cronin, Anthony; Carlton, Louise; MacSweeney, Mary; McDonnell, Mairead; Connell, Jeff; FitzGerald, R; Hamilton, Douglas H.; Ward, Mary J.; Glynn, Ronan W; Migone, Chantal

doi:10.2807/1560-7917.es.2016.21.27.30277

Cited by 6 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Gradually, increased awareness among clinicians led to the more timely diagnosis and notification. Similar challenges have impacted control efforts in recent measles outbreaks in other European countries [15, 26].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ongoing measles outbreak in Greece related to the recent European-wide epidemic

et al. 2018

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We report an ongoing measles outbreak in Greece. The first cases were notified through the mandatory notification system on May 2017 in Northern Greece and concerned a cluster of three imported cases in unvaccinated Roma siblings. So far, 3150 cases have been reported in all 13 Regions. Initially, the outbreak mainly affected Greek Roma but as it progressed it spread to non-minority Greek nationals. The outbreak reached its ultimate peak on week 10/2018 but from week 15/2018 has been gradually declining. Most cases (60.6%) were Roma (especially children <10 year-old) followed by non-minority Greek nationals (29.3%; mostly young adults). The majority (80.4%) were unvaccinated. Interestingly, 129 (4.1%) cases were healthcare workers (HCWs). Genotype B3 was identified by molecular methods in all 87 cases tested. Overall, 61.3% of the cases were hospitalised. Complications were reported in 17.1% of the cases among which four deaths. The outbreak occurred after 3 years without local endemic measles transmission. Extensive vaccination implemented as the major public health measure managed to prevent the emergence of a large number of cases in refugee/migrant hosting sites. Mitigation efforts currently focus on raising awareness among HCWs and closing the immunisation gap in populations with suboptimal vaccination coverage.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ongoing measles outbreak in Greece related to the recent European-wide epidemic

et al. 2018

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“…While the burden of vaccine‐preventable disease is greatest in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs; Oyo‐Ita 2016; Sutter 2006), outbreaks occur all over the world, including in countries with relatively high coverage (e.g. Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Australia, USA; Barrett 2016; Filia 2017; Grammens 2017; Townsville‐Mackay 2013; Zipprich 2015). Therefore, improving and maintaining global childhood vaccination rates is an ongoing public health goal, prioritised by major international health strategies and agreements, such as the UN Millennium Development Goals (UN Millennium Project 2006), the WHO‐UNICEF Global Immunization Vision and Strategy (WHO 2009), and the Global Vaccine Action Plan 2011 to 2020 (WHO 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Face-to-face interventions for informing or educating parents about early childhood vaccination

Kaufman

Ryan

Walsh

et al. 2018

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

168

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BackgroundEarly childhood vaccination is an essential global public health practice that saves two to three million lives each year, but many children do not receive all the recommended vaccines. To achieve and maintain appropriate coverage rates, vaccination programmes rely on people having sufficient awareness and acceptance of vaccines.Face‐to‐face information or educational interventions are widely used to help parents understand why vaccines are important; explain where, how and when to access services; and address hesitancy and concerns about vaccine safety or efficacy. Such interventions are interactive, and can be adapted to target particular populations or identified barriers.This is an update of a review originally published in 2013.ObjectivesTo assess the effects of face‐to‐face interventions for informing or educating parents about early childhood vaccination on vaccination status and parental knowledge, attitudes and intention to vaccinate.Search methodsWe searched the CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, five other databases, and two trial registries (July and August 2017). We screened reference lists of relevant articles, and contacted authors of included studies and experts in the field. We had no language or date restrictions.Selection criteriaWe included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and cluster‐RCTs evaluating the effects of face‐to‐face interventions delivered to parents or expectant parents to inform or educate them about early childhood vaccination, compared with control or with another face‐to‐face intervention. The World Health Organization recommends that children receive all early childhood vaccines, with the exception of human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV), which is delivered to adolescents.Data collection and analysisWe used standard methodological procedures expected by Cochrane. Two authors independently reviewed all search results, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies.Main resultsIn this update, we found four new studies, for a total of ten studies. We included seven RCTs and three cluster‐RCTs involving a total of 4527 participants, although we were unable to pool the data from one cluster‐RCT. Three of the ten studies were conducted in low‐ or middle‐ income countries.All included studies compared face‐to‐face interventions with control. Most studies evaluated the effectiveness of a single intervention session delivered to individual parents. The interventions were an even mix of short (ten minutes or less) and longer sessions (15 minutes to several hours).Overall, elements of the study designs put them at moderate to high risk of bias. All studies but one were at low risk of bias for sequence generation (i.e. used a random number sequence). For allocation concealment (i.e. the person randomising participants was unaware of the study group to which participant would be allocated), three were at high risk and one was judged at unclear risk of bias. Due to the educational nature of the intervention, blinding of participants and personnel was not possible in any ...

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“…While conceptually simple, epicurves are useful in many respects. They provide a simple, visual outline of epidemic dynamics, which can be used for assessing the growth or decline of an outbreak ( Barrett et al ., 2016; Fitzgerald et al ., 2014; Jernberg et al ., 2015; Lanini et al ., 2014; Nhan et al ., 2018) and therefore informing intervention measures ( Meltzer et al ., 2014; WHO Ebola Response Team et al , 2014; WHO Ebola Response Team et al ., 2015). In addition, epicurves also form the raw material used by a range of modelling techniques for short-term forecasting ( Cori et al ., 2013; Funk et al ., 2018; Nouvellet et al ., 2018; Viboud et al ., 2018) as well as in outbreak detection algorithms from syndromic surveillance data ( Farrington & Andrews, 2003; Unkel et al ., 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epidemic curves made easy using the R package incidence

et al. 2019

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The epidemiological curve (epicurve) is one of the simplest yet most useful tools used by field epidemiologists, modellers, and decision makers for assessing the dynamics of infectious disease epidemics. Here, we present the free, open-source package incidence for the R programming language, which allows users to easily compute, handle, and visualise epicurves from unaggregated linelist data. This package was built in accordance with the development guidelines of the R Epidemics Consortium (RECON), which aim to ensure robustness and reliability through extensive automated testing, documentation, and good coding practices. As such, it fills an important gap in the toolbox for outbreak analytics using the R software, and provides a solid building block for further developments in infectious disease modelling. incidence is available from https://www.repidemicsconsortium.org/incidence.

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An ongoing measles outbreak linked to a suspected imported case, Ireland, April to June 2016

Cited by 6 publications

References 9 publications

Ongoing measles outbreak in Greece related to the recent European-wide epidemic

Ongoing measles outbreak in Greece related to the recent European-wide epidemic

Face-to-face interventions for informing or educating parents about early childhood vaccination

Epidemic curves made easy using the R package incidence

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