Description

Timely measles and rubella surveillance is critical to disease control. Identifying and confirming suspected measles and rubella cases through surveillance allows:
1) early detection of outbreaks,
2) analysis of on-going transmission in order to mount more effective vaccination measures, and
3) estimation of the underlying true incidence based on the patterns in reported data.

Most Member States submit monthly reports on suspected and confirmed measles and rubella cases identified through their national disease surveillance systems to WHO. In general, the number of reported cases reflects a small proportion of the true number of cases occurring in the community. Many cases do not seek health care or, if diagnosed, are not reported. In addition, there is a one to two month lag time in reporting. For these reasons, the data provided on this page under-represents the true number of cases, particularly those occurring in the last one to two months.

Please note that all data contained within is provisional. The annual number of cases of measles and rubella officially reported by a member state is only available by July of each following year (through the joint WHO UNICEF annual data collection exercise). If any numbers from this provisional data are quoted, they should be properly sourced with a date (i.e. “official data based on monthly data reported to WHO (Geneva) as of April 2024”). For official data from 1980-2022, please visit our WHO Immunization data portal

Please note that the data is available on the WHO Immunization data portal - Provisional measles and rubella data