Bhutan announces successful elimination of rubella

Category : State Published on: July 31 2023

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Bhutan has announced the successful elimination of rubella.
The World Health Organization South-East Asia Region announced Bhutan and Timor-Leste have eliminated rubella, a highly contagious disease that causes serious illness and irreversible birth defects in newborns of women infected during pregnancy, but preventable through vaccination.
Bhutan and Timor-Leste had eliminated measles in 2017 and 2018 respectively, and now join Maldives and Sri Lanka to achieve elimination of measles and rubella by 2023.
Bhutan first had the rubella outbreak around 2003 and the vaccine rollout took place in 2006.
According to the WHO, UNICEF estimates that the coverage with the first dose of a measles-rubella-containing vaccine in the South-East Asia Region has improved from 86 percent in 2021 to 92 percent in 2022 (a 6 percent increase), while coverage of the second dose of the vaccine has jumped from 78 percent in 2021 to 85 percent in 2022 (a 7 percent point increase).