Putin attributed the surge in measles to visitors from Ukraine – Kommersant

President Vladimir Putin said that the surge in measles in Russia began, in part, because of people who moved from Ukraine, where immunization rates are low. He explained the lack of vaccines as a technical glitch and promised that the problem would be solved in the near future.

“There is such a surge in measles disease all over the world, it takes off once every four years. Unfortunately, this is due to low immunization in the countries where labor migrants come from, and from Ukraine. Millions of people moved to us from Ukraine,” the president explained during the “Results of the Year.”

According to Vladimir Putin, one of the problems is also the departure of a number of pharmaceutical companies from Russia. He noted that there were 14 vital drugs among those that left the market. The President assured that the import substitution commission would cope with replacing the drugs that left the Russian Federation. “We will both import and produce ourselves,” Vladimir Putin emphasized.

According to Rospotrebnadzor data cited by Medvestnik, over the nine months of this year, 288 times more measles cases were identified among adults in Russia than a year earlier. Number of reported cases of measles among children from the beginning of the year to September exceeded 4.9 thousand. This is 262 times more than for the same period in 2022. According to experts, the increase in measles incidence is associated with the consequences of the pandemic, a shortage of vaccines, as well as increased anti-vaccination sentiment.

Read more about the situation with measles in Russia in the Kommersant article. “Don’t put measles on our wounds”.