Thousands of measles cases reported after outbreaks in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

A major outbreak of measles in Israel has caused one death and over a thousand cases in the last eight months, officials have revealed.

A majority of the cases were recorded in Jerusalem, including that of an 18-month-old girl who was brought last Thursday by ambulance to Shaarei Tzedek hospital without a pulse and not breathing. The doctors failed to save her life.

It was the first case of a child dying from measles in Israel since 1990. The child belonged to a Charedi sect in Jerusalem which for religious reasons do not record births of their children with any government ministry, including the health authorities, meaning they are not routinely inoculated.

Israeli children are usually inoculated for measles twice, at the age of one and then again after starting school at six. Cases have been rare in recent decades, although there were small-scale outbreaks in 2007 and 2015.