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25 April 2019,169 million, or on average 21.1 million a year, are the children who between 2010 and 2017 did not receive the first dose of measles vaccine. This was stated by UNICEF, which launched new data on the occasion of the World Vaccination Week, which is celebrated in the last week of April. In the first three months of 2019, more than 110,000 measles cases were reported worldwide, about 300% more than in the same period last year.

About 110,000 people, many of them children, died as a result of measles in 2017, an increase of 22% over the previous year. Two doses of measles vaccine are essential to protect children from the disease. However, due to lack of access, inadequate health systems, carelessness and, in some cases, vaccine fear and skepticism, the global coverage of the first dose of measles vaccine in 2017 was 85%, a data remained relatively constant over the last decade despite the demographic growth. The overall coverage for the second dose is much lower, at 67%. The WHO, World Health Organization, recommends a 95% threshold of vaccination coverage to reach the so-called "herd immunity".

States and vaccinations
The United States tops the list of high-income countries with the largest number of children not receiving the first dose of measles vaccine between 2010 and 2017, more than 2.5 million children. Then there are France and the United Kingdom with over 600,000 and 500,000 unvaccinated children in the same period respectively. Italy ranks 5th with 435,000 unvaccinated children. In fourth place is Argentina with 438 thousand unvaccinated children.