After outbreaks of measles have been recorded in Serbia and Slovenia, and the first case in Bosnia was also recently discovered, Zagreb's hospital for infectious diseases Fran Mihaljevic confirmed that there have been no patients infected with measles in Croatia yet.

However, according to data compiled by Croatia’s public health institute (HZJZ), the danger of possible outbreaks does exist, with the most threatened areas in Split-Dalmatia and Dubrovnik-Neretva counties in the south, where the vaccination rate are the lowest in the country.

“What we have warned about before is now turning into a threat. Low vaccination rates and the parents’ fear of having their children vaccinated is putting in jeopardy the lives of their children, as well as all other children. So my message to parents is to vaccinate their children, take care of your children and the children of others,” Health Minister, Milan Kujundzic, said.

Head of the department for children’s diseases at the Fran Mihaljevic hospital, dr. Goran Tesovic, said that there was a real possibility that the disease might appear in Croatia’s population.

“We had a small outbreak of measles three years ago, with 250 infected patients on record, at a time when the national vaccination rate was far higher than today. According to HZJZ data, in 2016 the rate was 89.7 percent (of all children). So the threat of diseases spreading to Croatia is real, especially after several large outbreaks have been recorded in countries in our immediate neighbourhood,” Tesovic told state broadcaster HRT.

He dismissed claims that Croatian children are given substandard vaccines.

“We are an EU country, so the same regulations used across the EU also apply here. The entire western world is using vaccines made by two or three pharmaceutical companies. These are all the same vaccines,” Tesovic said.

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