The World Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion has ex­pressed its alarm about in­creas­ing re­ports of measles out­breaks in many parts of the world.

At its Coun­cil meet­ing in San­ti­a­go, Chile, the as­so­ci­a­tion said that mis­con­cep­tions about vac­ci­na­tions and re­duced vac­ci­na­tion rates posed a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for health au­thor­i­ties of all na­tions.

An emer­gency res­o­lu­tion agreed by the meet­ing said it was clear that in­creas­ing glob­al trav­el by ‘less than ap­pro­pri­ate­ly pro­tect­ed in­di­vid­u­als’ as well as mis­con­cep­tions posed a chal­lenge.

The res­o­lu­tion strong­ly reaf­firms the World Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion’s 2012 State­ment on the Pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of Im­mu­ni­sa­tion, de­nounc­ing un­found­ed and in­ac­cu­rate claims about the pos­si­ble dan­gers of vac­cine ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Dr Frank Mont­gomery, chair of the as­so­ci­a­tion, said: ‘The grow­ing measles out­breaks are putting both chil­dren and adult lives at risk. We echo the warn­ing from the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion that “vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy” has be­come a top glob­al health threat.

‘Measles is not a triv­ial dis­ease and vac­ci­na­tion should be re­gard­ed as a pub­lic du­ty and not an in­di­vid­ual choice. The risk to herd im­mu­ni­ty from vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy based on false da­ta must be con­front­ed’.

World Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion’s pol­i­cy clear­ly states that vac­ci­na­tion and im­mu­ni­sa­tion have been ac­knowl­edged as an ef­fec­tive and safe pre­ven­tive strat­e­gy for sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. And vac­cine de­vel­op­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tion have been the most sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­ven­tion to erad­i­cate in­fec­tious dis­eases and in­flu­ence glob­al health in mod­ern times.

The as­so­ci­a­tion is re­new­ing its call to all its na­tion­al med­ical as­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers to in­crease aware­ness of im­mu­ni­sa­tion sched­ules and for in­di­vid­ual physi­cians to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of vac­cine hes­i­tant par­ents.