The Council on Foreign Relations has created an impressive interactive map of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks around the world since 2008. Measles, Mumps, Whooping cough, Polio and Rubella are all measured.
You find mixed results in Africa, with the overall trend the last few years going in the right direction. This is probably the result of increased focus and attention on distributing vaccines, particularly by the Gates Foundation.
Europe, however, is another story. Here’s western Europe in 2008. There were a few clusters of outbreaks, but no full on epidemics. The size of the circle denotes the size of the outbreak. Red is Measles, yellowish green is Mumps, blue is Rubella.
And here is 2011. Outbreaks were all over the place. There were over 14,000 measles cases in France alone.
And in 2013. The problem lingers.
The cause of this explosion of vaccine preventable illnesses in Europe is the anti-vaccine movement, which peddles an erroneous correlation between vaccines and autism. It is horriblly irresponsible to peddle these claims, but even more irresponsible to deny your child a vaccine. You put your own child at risk and you put other children at risk. The fact that France experienced a measles outbreak in 2011 is just shameful.