What CDC Is Doing To Reduce Measles and Rubella/CRS Worldwide

This boy and millions more children under five in Myanmar may only remember the vaccination for a few days, but it will help to protect them against measles for a lifetime.
Photo credit: C. McNab/Measles Initiative

CDC played a key role, in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), in developing a regional measles elimination strategy in 1996 that led to the elimination of this disease in the Americas in 2002. As a founding member of the Measles and Rubella Initiative (MRI), launched in 2001, CDC provides both scientific and technical support to partners and countries in other parts of the world to reduce measles and rubella deaths. To this end, CDC

• Helps plan (including micro-planning), implement, monitor, and evaluate measles and rubella vaccination campaigns to eliminate measles and rubella in targeted areas.
• Conducts operational research to provide evidence for recommendations to strengthen and guide measles- and rubella-control activities at the local, regional, and global levels.
• Provides technical assistance to conduct measles and rubella outbreak investigations, surveillance reviews, and routine vaccination program evaluations.
• Helps create and/or strengthen country-based measles, rubella, and CRS surveillance systems that allow countries to detect and monitor the presence of measles, rubella, and CRS and respond quickly.
• As the global reference laboratory for measles and rubella, provides resources for national reference laboratories and provides technical assistance to other global public health laboratories for the collection and shipment of clinical samples for measles testing using real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).