Dramatic decrease in measles in Africa

Wonder what the anti-vaccination crowd makes of this?

Measles cases and deaths fall by 60% in Africa since 1999

Largely due to the technical and financial support of the Measles Initiative and commitment from African governments, more than 200 million children in Africa have been vaccinated against measles and one million lives have been saved since 1999. Measles cases and deaths have dropped by 60%, thanks to improvements in routine and supplementary immunization activities in Africa.

This dramatic drop has occurred in only a few years, coinciding with a massive measles vaccination campaign throughout the African continent (discussed briefly in this post and in the article linked above). Typically, anti-vaccine folks say that the drop in infectious disease mortality that coincided with increase in vaccination rate was actually due to improvements in diet and sanitation (which, granted, can definitely do a lot to decrease infectious disease morbidity and mortality), but no notable improvements have been made in these areas over the past 5 years during the measles vaccine campaign. Think any of them will finally admit they're wrong?

Yeah, me either.

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