Diana Chang Blanc

Dear colleagues, 

The conclusions of the Global Measles and Rubella Strategic Plan 2012–2020 implementation midterm review highlighted the need to update protocols for guiding surveillance and outbreak investigation and response. 

To that end, WHO and partners have developed the Measles Outbreak Guideto assist with measles outbreak management in all settings that are striving for and approaching measles elimination, 

This English language publication is now online on the IVB measles page: https://www.who.int/teams/immunization-vaccines-and-biologicals/diseases/measles

Direct link to document: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/measles-outbreak-guide

French translation is in process.   

This guide is based on existing WHO documents, including: 

• Response to measles outbreaks in measles mortality reduction settings; 
• Guide for clinical case management and infection prevention and control during a measles outbreak; 
• WHO Surveillance standards for vaccine-preventable diseases; 
• Roadmap to elimination standard measles and rubella surveillance; 
• Measles vaccines: WHO position paper; 
• The immunological basis for immunization: measles; 
• Establishing and strengthening immunization in the second year of life (2YL); 
• Manual for the laboratory-based surveillance of measles, rubella, and congenital rubella syndrome;
• Planning and implementing high-quality supplementary immunization activities for injectable vaccines; and 
• Region-specific guidelines and experience with recent measles outbreaks globally. 

This guide also draws on the standard operating procedures (SOPs) to apply for measles outbreak response support from the Measles & Rubella Initiative Outbreak Response Fund and includes a section on measles outbreak recovery so that contributing factors and potential root causes are identified and addressed systematically after a measles outbreak. This guide does not aim to be a comprehensive guide on measles elimination or routine immunization (RI) more broadly.

Measles outbreak training on OpenWHO supports implementation of this guide: https://openwho.org/courses/measles-outbreak-pre-deployment-training

This training is also being translated into multiple languages.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out directly to William Perea ([email protected]) or Lee Lee Ho [email protected]