As in many other parts of the world, measles cases are rising in Australia. This year has seen 165 cases to date, the largest reported number since 2019, with significant outbreaks in nearly every state and territory, according to the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System.
The number of reported cases is almost three times that recorded in 2024. Disturbingly, some of the measles outbreaks include individuals contracting measles without ever having left the country, and without any other unusual activity, suggesting local transmission of disease. This includes those attending concerts in Sydney and Queensland last month, pubs and shopping centres in Western Australia, and a teenager living in rural Tasmania.
There is now a real danger that measles, which was declared eliminated within Australia in 2014, is making a resurgence. This concerning development is part of an international trend that has seen other nations and regions, most recently across North America, lose their status of being measles-free. This is the result both of inadequate immunisation rates against measles and attacks on public health being carried out in Australia and internationally.
Measles, an airborne-spread viral disease, is one of the most contagious viruses in existence. Before effective vaccinations became widely available in the 1960s and 1970s, it was one of the most common childhood illnesses globally, killing millions annually. Even today, due to inadequate access to healthcare in many parts of the world, the disease claims an estimated 100,000 lives each year.
While in most cases measles is experienced with flu-like symptoms and an associated body rash, it causes pneumonia in about 5 percent of infected children, while 1 in 1,000 develop severe encephalitis (brain-swelling) which can cause seizures, permanent brain injury and death. Measles can also cause a phenomenon known as “immune amnesia” where an infected person’s immune system is weakened and unable to fight off common viruses and bacteria for years, increasing their risk of death.
Measles can have a long incubation and infective period, of up to three weeks before symptoms arise, meaning that an infected person can often spread the virus without realising they are ill, easily endangering hundreds or thousands.
For most people, the two-dose MMR regime (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) introduced in the 1990s eliminates the risk of contracting measles and provides lifelong immunity. When over 95 percent of the population of a given region is inoculated, this allows for the elimination of measles, as the virus is unable to spread widely.
By this method, measles was largely eliminated in most advanced industrialised countries in the 1990s and the first decade of this century. In Australia, this has meant that just four people died of measles between 2000 and 2022, with only six hospitalisations in 2022.
Globally, the WHO estimates that the measles vaccine has saved the lives of 94 million children in the past 50 years, representing 60 percent of all children saved by vaccinations in this period.
Inadequate rates of vaccination, particularly among children, risk compromising this mass immunity. MMR vaccination rates in Australia peaked in 2020–21, at just under 95 percent nationally, in the early period of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and have declined since.
According to the Australian Immunisation Register, in 2025 no state or territory in Australia meets the target of 95 percent full immunisation for one-, two-, and five-year-olds for measles, with the rate of MMR vaccination at 92.6 percent nationally.
In various states and regions, this rate is even lower. New South Wales (NSW), Victoria and Queensland, the most populous states, have rates between 88–92 percent vaccination for one- and two-year-olds. And in certain rural regions and areas with disproportionately strong anti-vaccine views, such as the Richmond Valley in NSW and Gold Coast hinterlands in Queensland, the rates are as low as 75–80 percent.
The decline in vaccination since 2020 is not a coincidence. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a massive anti-science assault has been carried out on vaccines by far-right layers around the world, aided by governments and the corporate media, falsely calling into doubt their efficacy and safety.
The most grotesque example is Robert Kennedy Jr., the US health and human services secretary, who has spearheaded the Trump administration’s attack on vaccines, claiming the MMR vaccine is harmful to babies and young children. Kennedy is particularly associated with anti-MMR vaccine disinformation, having contributed to the deadly 2019 outbreak of measles in Samoa by spreading lies about the safety of vaccines.
Undoubtedly, the efforts of Trump/Kennedy and their co-thinkers in Australia who play upon fears that some parents have about vaccines, have had an impact, leading to delays or outright refusals in vaccinating their children.
While the Australian government has not discouraged MMR vaccination, it has failed to explicitly denounce the anti-science campaign.
Though health officials, scientists, and health workers have consistently pointed out the need to maintain 95 percent MMR vaccination, no consistent effort has been made by any Australian government to raise awareness about measles and the need to urgently increase vaccination rates, except for limited warnings when an outbreak has occurred.
The low profile of state and federal Australian governments about the rising incidence of measles is not accidental. It reflects a political strategy that prioritises corporate profits over health and lives. Determined that public health measures must not get in the way of business as usual, these governments oppose taking any serious measures to limit the spread of contagious disease, be it measles or COVID-19.
The measures enacted in 2020–21 to halt the spread of COVID-19, which also reduced measles to record low numbers, have all been reversed, including simple but effective protections like mandatory masking in public areas like factories, schools, and even hospitals.
This is coupled with decades of budget cuts carried out by governments of all political parties against public health, making it harder for workers and their families to access free and timely healthcare.
Routine immunisation relies on staffed local public health units, outreach programs, school‑based clinics and surveillance systems. Budget and staff cuts destroy that capacity. Health worker shortages—in large part caused by repeated cuts to real wages and conditions—reduce capacity for outreach into vulnerable communities.
Similarly, declining real wages and increasingly insecure employment across the working class have made it more difficult for parents and carers to take time off for clinic visits. Underfunded schools and overstretched teachers are less able to enforce or support vaccination catch‑ups.
The decline in measles vaccinations from 2021 did not immediately see increased cases in Australia, but this was likely due to the decreased rates of international travel and thus reduced exposure to overseas measles between 2020–23. However, as global travel returns to and exceeds pre-pandemic levels, and governments continue to slash public health measures with criminally reckless abandon, a phenomenon of growing transmission of infectious diseases, including measles, is being observed.
Record outbreaks of measles have occurred globally in the past two years, in every inhabited continent. In 2023, the most recent year for which global statistics are available, there were 10.3 million cases of measles, 20 percent more than in 2022. The increased numbers also reflect a decline in global vaccination, as inaction by governments during the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic caused disruptions to vaccination and surveillance programs.
Between 2020 and 2022, at least 60 million measles vaccine doses were postponed or missed due to COVID-19 disruptions. Global vaccination coverage dropped from 84 to 81 percent in just one year, 2020 to 2021—the lowest rate since 2008. The WHO has estimated that, as a result, global measles cases rose by 18 percent and deaths by 43 percent between 2021–2022.
These figures highlight the international nature of the problem and tasks that confront the working class. The resurgence of measles, a disease that should have been globally eliminated decades ago, is yet another indictment of the capitalist system.
A scientifically based program to eliminate measles and other diseases, based on providing free, high-quality healthcare globally, and defending and expanding public health measures such as mass immunisation, will not occur under capitalism. What is required is the development of a global mass revolutionary movement of the working class to fight for a political alternative—a socialist program to rebuild society around human need rather than private profit.