Challenges for Measles Elimination in Nepal

Abstract

In Nepal, immunization against measles in the public health sector was introduced in the fiscal year 1981/82. The coverage rate of the measles immunization has been gradually increasing to a level of around 80% in a national scale. However, there are many districts which are lagging behind to achieve the 80% target. Similarly, there remains a large pool of unimmunized infants in the country every year, which explains frequent outbreaks of measles every now and then. Besides there are other factors that challenge the goal of eliminating measles from Nepal. The challenges cover not only programmatic aspects but also issues like need to reach a very high immunization coverage for achieving herd immunity, vaccine efficacy and appropriate case management.