Efficacy of Measles Vaccination Schedule in Diyala Province, Iraq

Abstract

Measles is a highly contagious systemic viral illness. Despite the availability of a safe and effective attenuated measles vaccine for more than 50 years measles is still a major causes of children morbidity and mortality. In recent years, it has become a global public health problem, attributed to low vaccination coverage observed in different countries. The causative agent of illness is Measles virus (MeV), which is a member of genus Morbillivirus within the Paramyxoviridae family, it has a negative-sense, single-stranded RNA genome. In the 1963, the  live measles vaccine was introduced and consequently there was  dramatical reduction of  these numbers. The vaccine was initially given as one dose. The MMR is a live attenuated vaccine, which are used to stimulate the immune system to protect against measles, mumps and rubella. The study aims to determination of the efficacy of measles vaccine among vaccinated children in Diyala province and assessing of effect of certain socio-demographic factors on vaccine efficacy. A study was performed from 1 Nov 2020 to 20 Oct 2021 in Health centers in Diyala Governorate. The study was conducted on 270 vaccinated children with the MMR, the control group was 65 unvaccinated children. The IgG antibody determined by the enzyme-linkid immunosorbent assay methodology. Ms excel package and SPSS 27 software was used for analysis.  Among 270 vaccinated children 92.6% were positive for IgG antibody and IgG positivity rate was directly proportionate with number of vaccine doses, as those children received four vaccine doses had significantly higher rate of positive measles IgG compared to those received one or two doses , and only 7.4% were negative for IgG.