Status of Measles Elimination 'from the Reported Outbreaks: Fars Province, 2001-03

Background: the status of measles elimination is best summarizedby evaluation of the effective reproduction number r;maintaining r < 1 is necessary and sufficient to achieve elimination.in the present article, we estimated reproduction numberr for the measle s data reported for the fars province ofiran in 2001-03.methods: we estimated r by using sizes and durations ofchains of measles transmission and the proportion of casesimported, when offspring distribution is either poisson orgeometric. in each case, we calculated the profile 95% confidenceintervals. these comprised 575 cases, forming 191chains of transmission, of which 79 had > 1 case. 128 caseswere clas sified as importations.results: the results using the pois son and geometric distributionfor offspring and the proportion of cases imported differeds lightly, but all 3 methods gave an r < 1. the resultswere not sensitive to the minimum s ize and duration of outbreakcons idered, as long as single-case chains were excluded,or to exclusion of cha ins without a known important source.conclusion: these results demonstrated that susceptibility tomeasle s was beneath the epidemic threshold and that endemictransmission was eliminated.