Worldwide trend in measles incidence from 1980 to 2016: A pooled analysis of evidence from 194 WHO Member States.

Background: Decline in measles cases has not been uniform across countries and regions. Hence, we assessed the trend of measles from 1980 to 2016 with respect to WHO regions, World Bank income groups, and globally.

Methods: We have conducted secondary data analysis by using the data on measles incidence from Global Health Observatory. For clustering adjustment, random intercept modeling with negative binomial distribution was used.

Results: Globally, there was decline in the measles incidence from 4211,431 in 1980 to 132,325 in 2016. This accounts for around 8% decline in the measles cases every year (IRR - 0.92, P < 0.001). The results showed that there was a true declining trend after adjusting for clustering at regional (IRR - 0.90, P < 0.001) and income group level (IRR - 0.91, P < 0.001).

Conclusion: Current study showed that there was significant decline in the incident number of measles cases based on worldwide, regional, and income group estimates, but insufficient to achieve the measles elimination target by 2020.