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Background: Globally an estimated number of 20 million cases and 164,000 deaths occur from measles each year. Airborne transmission of measles virus has been documented with reproduction ratio (RR) of 12-18. Measles is still a public health problem in many developing countries, particularly in parts of Africa and Asia. The aim of investigation was to identify etiologic agent, risk factors and institute doable intervention measures. Methods: A 1:2 unmatched case-control study was applied from December 20-30/2014 and data were collected using structured questionnaire. The data were entered in to SPSS version 16, Epiinfo7 and MS-Excel work sheet, Odds Ratio, 95% CI and P-value were constructed to measure the significance of association in bivariate and multivariate analysis. Results: The outbreak stayed for 24 weeks and a total of 404 suspected cases of measles and six cases were died with CFR of 1.5%. The mean age of the cases was 11.9 years with a range of 9 months - 35 years and mean age of controls was 5.5 years with a range of 1-21 years. The overall attack rate (AR) of the case was 163/100,000 populations. Odds of illness among non vaccinated (AOR: 5; 95% CI: 1.5-16.2; P: 0.006) compared to vaccinated, odds of illness among people with contact (AOR: 19.6; 95% CI: 1.3-290; P< 0.029) compared to people without contact with cases, odds of illness among people with travel history (AOR: 14.9; 95% CI: 3.8-58; P< 0.001) compared to without travel history, odds of illness among age group from 5-15 years (AOR: 38.5 ; 95% CI: 3.6-410; p < 0.002) compared to others. These were significant factors in both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Conclusion: Unvaccinated children less than 15 years of age were primarily affected by this outbreak. The case fatality rate was greater than 1%. Delayed case management and late investigation worsened the situation of an outbreak in the affected locality. Absence of vaccination, contact with the suspected individuals and travel history to affected areas were found to be risk factors. Mass vaccination and active case management to contain the epidemics is strongly recommended. Key words: Measles, Outbreak, Fogera, Ethiopia |
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