Is the Existing Measles Vaccination Schedule in the Russian Federation Effective?

Relevance. During the period of long–term measles vaccination in Russia, the age of those who were vaccinated with live measles vaccine changed several times – from 9 to 15-18 months, until scientific research proved the optimal age of 12 months. During the period of measles elimination, when population immunity is formed mainly through immunization, and the artificial active immunity of mothers protects children of the first year of life for a shorter period of time than natural active immunity, the incidence of this infection in children under 1 year of age is of particular importance for managing the epidemic process of measles. The aim of this study is to assess the importance of measles in the epidemic process of children under the age of 1 year during the elimination of infection, the effectiveness of the current measles vaccination regimen.
Materials and methods. The measles incidence in children under 1 year of age was analyzed in absolute and relative terms for the period from 2010 to 2024. For more u For a more in-depth analysis, the years of the increase in the incidence of 2012, 2014, 2019, 2023 and 2024 were selected, when the patterns of involvement of this analyzed group in the epidemic process of measles were most pronounced. The Pearson coefficient was used to determine the correlation.
Results and discussions. The configuration of the measles incidence curve in children in the first year of life completely coincides with the dynamics of measles incidence in the general population, and a strong positive correlation (r=+0.99) confirmed the dependence of the incidence of the analyzed age group on the overall incidence. Further in-depth analysis showed that children under the age of 1 are not the leading group at high risk of infection, but rather passively participate in the epidemic process, becoming involved in the process with an increasing number of sources of infection. Thus, the proportion of sick children during the years of the rise in morbidity ranged from 7.77% to 15.87%, but even in the year of the maximum increase in the overall incidence, the but at the same time, even in the year of the maximum increase in the overall incidence recorded in 2024, when the total number of cases exceeded 22 thousand people, the analyzed indicator did not exceed 9.69%. Children aged 6-11 months were more likely to get sick, accounting for an average of 75.98%, while the proportion of children with measles in the first five months averaged 24.02%. The structure of measles cases was dominated by unvaccinated individuals. During the years of the rise in the incidence of 2012, 2014, 2019, 2023, 2024, the proportion of the unvaccinated accounted for respectively 77,0%, 75,2%, 84,4%, 88,8%, 89,5%. Among them, children of the first year of life accounted for a small percentage – only 20,6%, 14,9%, 9,4%, 8,7% and 10.7%.
Conclusion. The results of the analysis of the incidence of children under one year of age confirmed the validity of vaccination tactics at 12 months and at 6 years of age in our country. The incidence of measles in children under the age of vaccination directly depends on the vaccination against measles in their immediate environment, therefore it is very important to maintain population immunity at a level of at least 95.0%. At the moment, there is no reason to change the scheme, which does not exclude its change in the event of new vaccines or changes in the epidemic situation for measles.

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