Overview
Generalities
| Generalities | |
| Agent | Virus: measles virus, genus morbillivirus, family paramyxoviridae. |
| Incubation | 10 days (7-18 days, may be to 21 days). |
| Period of communicability | 4 days before rash and 4 days after rash onset. |
| Reservoir | Humans. |
| Modes of transmission | -Person-to-person: direct contact with droplets, rarely indirect contact. -Airborne (if confined place) |
| Clinical | -Febrile maculo-papular rash -Complications: otitis media (7-9%), pneumonia (1-6%), gastro-enteritis (8%) and dehydration, blindness, convulsions (1/200), encephalitis (1/1000) -Encephalitis: post-infectious encephalitis 1 week from onset; or acute encephalitis of delayed type weeks and months after onset) -Long term complication: sub-acute sclerosing pan-encephalitis SSPE, 7 years or more after onset (1/25000 case, and 1/8000 if onset under 2 years old) -Case fatality: 3-6% in developing countries, 1-3/1000 in developed countries. |
| Worldwide | -Worldwide. -In high coverage area: outbreak every 7-8 years. -In low coverage area: outbreak every 3-4 years |
| Lebanon | Annual outbreaks from 2003 to 2007, and in 2013. |
| Control objective | Elimination goal set to 2012 in EMR countries, and eradication to 2020 |
| National figures | |
| Figure 1: Reported measles cases in Lebanon, 1997-2013 (Source: MOPH) | |
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