Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) -- More than 12,000 Europeans, mostly children, contracted measles in the past two years as parents shunned vaccinations, casting doubt on public health efforts to eradicate the infectious disease by 2010, researchers said.

While vaccines against measles have been standard across Europe for two decades, fluctuations in coverage between countries and ethnic groups lead to sporadic outbreaks. Some parents refuse immunizations for their children, fearing a tie between the shot and autism, though a link hasn’t been proven.

Tracking in 32 countries found 12,132 measles cases in 2006 and 2007, including seven deaths, with another 6,000 infections reported in the first three quarters of 2008, said Mark Muscat, lead researcher at the vaccine preventable disease surveillance network. Romania, Germany, the UK, Switzerland and Italy have vaccination rates below 90 percent, compared with the World Health Organization’s 95 percent recommendation, the study in the journal Lancet found.

“If we don’t achieve 95 percent coverage, it seems like we will never achieve the goal” of eradicating measles in Europe, said Muscat, an epidemiologist at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, in a telephone interview. “It has not only to be reached, but be maintained. The minute it slips away, we are at risk of having susceptible pools of people for the disease.”

2010 Elimination

The World Health Organization, which established the goal to eliminate measles by 2010, says immunization programs should aim for 95 percent coverage with two doses of vaccine. Some countries, including Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary, are already reaching those levels and have correspondingly few measles cases, the study found.

In the U.S., measles cases also are rising, fueled by an increasing number of parents who chose to avoid having their children vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The disease is highly contagious, spread from droplets that come from the nose, mouth or throats of those who are infected. Patients typically develop high fevers, runny noses and a rash that can last for several weeks. There is no treatment and most people recover fully. In rare cases, particularly in malnourished children and those with weak immune systems, severe complications including blindness, swelling in the brain, pneumonia and death can occur.

Europeans also need to consider the impact of rising measles cases when visiting countries with poor access to vaccines and medical care, wrote Jacques Kremer and Claude Miller, measles experts at the WHO’s Institute of Immunology in Luxembourg, in an editorial. It’s unclear how many cases in places like the Americas are spread by visiting Europeans, they said.

“To see large outbreaks and high measles mortality in these regions after a reintroduction of measles virus from Europe would be embarrassing,” Kremer and Miller wrote.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michelle Fay Cortez in London at mcortez@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 6, 2009 19:01 EST