"Parents of children not vaccinated with MMR have reason to fear"

Parents of children not vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, of which there are many in Montenegro, have every reason to be afraid at this moment. Currently, there are 32.000 children under the age of 18 living in Montenegro who have not been vaccinated with this vaccine, epidemiologist Milena Popović Samardžić said in Colors of the Morning.

"I had to say the most contagious infectious disease. This means that one infected person can infect a large number of susceptible people. In the literature, you will find that it is 12 to 18 people, and somewhere you will find that it is from 22 to 24 people, so it is eight times more contagious than covid, and we have seen in the past two years what it all looks like with infectious diseases," explained Popović Samardžić.

The last case of measles in Montenegro was recorded in 2018, and at that time there were 200 confirmed cases and another 200 suspected cases.

Popović Samardžić points out that studies have established that MMR does not lead to disease or autism.

"The MMR vaccine is the vaccine that has been studied the most and that has been under the most scrutiny. There have even been studies in at-risk populations, in children who already have a brother or sister in the family living with diseases from the autism spectrum, and therefore you consider them a risk population. , where they have a positive family history and such people have been followed up. After vaccination with the MMR vaccine, absolutely no increased risk has been found, nor that the MMR vaccines lead to the onset of the disease, to be a trigger let alone a cause of autism. We have numerous examples through which it has been proven that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism even though we are still fighting this massive misinformation battle," she noted.

He states that measles is the most dangerous for children under the age of five, and especially risky for children under the age of two.

"It is for this reason that we advise timely vaccination, which is carried out between the 12th month of life and the 15th month of life. We in Montenegro have a problem with postponing vaccination, until the child speaks, until he walks, which has absolutely nothing to do with the vaccine." , believes Popović Samardžić.

He adds that the measles virus in a child who has not been vaccinated causes so-called immunological amnesia, which means that the antibodies created either by infection or by vaccination against all the diseases you have encountered up to that point, drop drastically.

"They almost disappear and you become susceptible again to the whole spectrum of various diseases, which is why the high incidence of complications is strongly associated with measles. Symptoms start with very high temperatures over 40 degrees, conjunctivitis, there are also very common complications such as pneumonia, deafness like the result of an ear infection..."

The measles epidemic is currently registered in Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Yemen, countries affected by war, which is why, Popović Samardžić believes, the war in Ukraine is a kind of risk for everyone.

"Europe is small and when it comes to infectious diseases we have seen that the borders that divide us are actually invisible".