Over a hundred million infants receive measles vaccines annually, protecting them and communities against a deadly disea

Over 100 million infants are vaccinated against measles every year, which means more than 80% of one-year-olds are protected from this potentially life-threatening disease. This global effort has saved millions of lives.

That scale should be reassuring. Measles vaccines are safe and reduce the risk of infection by over 95%, making them one of our most powerful tools to prevent childhood deaths. Outbreaks have become increasingly rare in many countries, global infant mortality has fallen, and measles vaccination alone is estimated to have saved more than 94 million lives.

But that progress is under threat: vaccination rates have fallen in recent years, as the chart shows, and fewer children are getting the protection they need. When coverage slips, measles spreads rapidly; more children suffer and die from a disease we can easily prevent.

Read my colleague Hannah’s article on the number of lives saved by childhood vaccinations →

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This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Over a hundred million infants receive measles vaccines annually, protecting them and communities against a deadly disea” by Saloni Dattani, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

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