Measles outbreak in Bulgaria: Health Minister urges parents to vaccinate their children
Following an outbreak of measles in Bulgaria, the country’s Health Minister Kiril Ananiev has urged parents to vaccinate their children.
“Vaccinate your children. The vaccines are not the enemy of your children. Vaccines protect children from acute illnesses that can have an effect later, when they grow up,” Ananiev said in a television interview.
He said that the necessary steps had been taken to control the measles contagion.
Bulgaria’s Health Ministry had sent detailed instructions to regional health inspectorates and the necessary vaccines were available if extra immunisations were required.
By February 15, twenty-one cases of measles in Bulgaria had been confirmed. Most were children from the Blagoevgrad district who had not been vaccinated against the illness.
On February 16, reports from Blagoevgrad said that the condition of a 27-year-old man infected with measles had deteriorated. He had been transferred to the intensive care section of the hospital in Blagoevgrad, Vesselka Momcheva of the regional health inspectorate said.
(Photo of Ananiev: government.bg)
