Kazakhstan has over 600 doses of measles vaccines

Kazakhstan has more than 630,000 does of measles vaccines, Kazinform News Agency learned from the Ministry of Healthcare.

The vaccination against measles is carried out in Kazakhstan as part of the National Immunization Timeline for children aged from 12 to 15 months and children aged 6, as well as under additional mass immunization program launched in November 2023 for children at the age of 6-10 months, 2-4 years, unvaccinated medical workers and persons under 18 who missed their scheduled vaccination.

Contact persons aged under 30, not vaccinated or with unknown immunization status, are subject to immunization too.

Kazakhstan is alarmed at rising number of measles cases.

On February 12, new hotbeds of infection were detected in educational facilities in the North Kazakhstan region. The region has already recorded 14 hotbeds of measles spread, including the Agricultural College in Yessil district, Secondary School No 23 in Petropavlovsk, Beskol Secondary School No 2, Smirnov Secondary School No 3, Bauman School. One more hotbed was detected in Military Base 6637 and Multifunctional Children’s Regional Hospital. 10,483 contact persons were detected. 777 of them were immunized, 63 persons had medical exemptions and 30 refused vaccination.

New measles cases are also registered in the capital of Kazakhstan, caused mainly by low vaccination rates. Thus, unvaccinated persons account for 68% of those infected.