The epidemiological characteristics of measles and difficulties of measles elimination in Hang Zhou, China.

OBJECTIVE

Following the national proclaim of Measles Elimination 2012, plenty of activities for controlling the incidence had practiced in Hangzhou. However, the incidence did not decrease to low degree and remained perform as gap to the elimination target. The present study aimed to describe the epidemiological characteristics of measles, and proposed reasonable method to the target in Hangzhou.

METHOD

Cases were collected by the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) from 2004 to 2011. The descriptive epidemiology was employed to analyze characteristics of measles.

RESULTS

A total of 4712 confirmed cases were enrolled by the NNDSS with 7.87 per 100,000 people of incidence rate on average from 2004 to 2011. Individuals lived urban districts had higher risk of measles than counties. Infants aged＜1 year observed the highest incidence rate with 239.35/100,000, and the age-specific incidence rate declined along with aged-group but reversed at adults. 52.20% of cases were floating cases and the measles vaccination was significantly different from the local cases (χ(2)=51.65, p＜ 0.001). February to June was the epidemic period for measles incidence with 81.88% of cases reported in cluster.

CONCLUSION

The descriptive characteristics of measles suggested that factors included infant and adult individual, floating population, and living urban area might be relate to the elimination target. More efforts were need to ensure susceptible population had accepted qualified measles vaccination.