Over the past 20 years, there’s been a lot of progress when it comes to combating measles.
But the World Health Organization’s latest global numbers, released this past weekend, are “very concerning,” says Dr. Patrick O’Connor, the WHO’s medical officer for measles and rubella.
Measles cases increased worldwide from more than 170,000 cases in 2022 to more than 320,000 cases in 2023, according to WHO’s count. And the first several months of 2024 have seen nearly 100,000 measles cases. These numbers are based on actual cases reported by individual countries but experts estimate the number of measles cases globally is far higher — the estimate in 2022 was more than 9 million — since many mild cases are never reported.