Valentyn Bakhnivskyi

According to the definition of the World Bank and World Health Organization, health of the population is one of the main factors for the development of the economy and the social well-being of each country.  Several positive changes have recently occurred in the health care field of Ukraine. However, despite of that the state of health of this country's population is currently assessed as insufficient. Since independence in 1991 Ukraine has not reached such a level of measles virus elimination as the Member States of the European Union. The aim of this article is to analyze the level of morbidity and mortality due to measles and the state of measles vaccination in Ukraine. In 2018, 53 219 measles cases were registered in Ukraine (incidence rate - 125, 47 per 100,000). The situation compared to the previous year deteriorated significantly and was 12-fold. In 2018, 16 people died of measles - 12 children and 4 adults. The status of inoculation of children under one year of age was 91%, which was less by 2% compared to 2017, but twice as much as in 2016, where only 46% children aged less than 1 year were vaccinated. Indicators of the epidemiological situation in Ukraine in 2018 deteriorated to a large extent compared to 2017. Based on the current trends in measles vaccination and the frequency of its occurrence, it could be argued that the elimination of measles is very much at risk due to both migration and the rapid development of anti-vaccine movements.

In this article, the governmental response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine is described, starting from the first detected cases, up until the summer of 2020. Pandemic caught Ukraine’s health care system in the midst of a reform. At the time of COVID-19 outbreak, the first steps of primary health care reform were already being implemented while the reform at the secondary health care level were about to started. However, changes of the political environment (due to the elections 2019), two changes of the Minister of Health (since the beginning of the pandemic), the absence of the general plan of action followed by the inconsistent political decisions, and the uncertainty in financing mechanisms of the secondary health care facilities, made the COVID-19 pandemic challenging for Ukraine. The Ukrainian government had difficulties in devoting additional recourses to medical facilities to protect medical professionals and provide treatment for patients. Instead, as a main intervention to combat COVID-19, the government implemented lockdown from 12 of March to 12th of May that only postponed the raise of infections, preserved lives. While the pandemic still had a highly negative impact on the economy, initial analysis indicate that lockdown could be considered effective from the economics point of view.