Measles & Rubella

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The Measles & Rubella Initiative: Why Eliminating Measles & Rubella Matters to CDC

As a founding member of the Measles & Rubella InitiativeExternal, CDC provides support to partners and countries. The Measles & Rubella Initiative is a global partnership committed to ensuring no child dies from measles or rubella, or is born with congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) – the leading vaccine-preventable infectious disease cause of birth defects, which can also be fatal.

Founded in 2001, the Initiative is led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, the Initiative has supported the delivery of more than 2 billion doses of measles-containing vaccine and helped raise measles vaccination coverage to 85% globally. As a result, worldwide measles deaths have been reduced by 75%. Measles vaccine has prevented an estimated 20.4 million deaths from 2000-2016. In 2012, the Initiative also started to include activities to prevent rubella and CRS worldwide.

The Initiative aims to further reduce measles deaths by 95% by 2015, and eliminate measles in all six of the WHO regions by 2020. Four regions have goals for the control and elimination of rubella.

Read more about what we do to eliminate measles, rubella, and CRS worldwide(http://wcms-wp.cdc.gov/globalhealth/measles/elimination.htm).