The Hill: U.N. report says vaccine hesitancy helped spark worldwide spike in measles cases last year
“Vaccine hesitancy contributed to a spike in measles cases across the globe between 2017 and 2018, UNICEF said in a report released Friday. The United Nations children’s agency said that hesitancy toward vaccinations in addition to ‘poor health infrastructure, civil strife, low community awareness,’ and complacency have led to measles outbreaks in both developed and developing countries across the world recently. The agency said the ‘alarming’ surge in such cases presents a ‘growing threat to children’…” (Folley, 3/1).

USA TODAY: UNICEF on alarming global surge in measles: ‘The real infection is misinformation’
“…The report says 98 percent of countries reported an uptick in measles cases in 2018. Ukraine, the Philippines, and Brazil had the largest increases. ‘This is a wake up call. We have a safe, effective, and inexpensive vaccine against a highly contagious disease — a vaccine that has saved almost a million lives every year over the last two decades,’ the release quotes Henrietta Fore, UNICEF’s executive director…” (Shannon, 3/1).