The milestone was confirmed after no cases of the highly contagious disease originating in the Americas were recorded in at least three years, the PAHO said. "This is truly a historic deed," said Carissa Etienne, director of the PAHO, which serves as the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional office for the Americas. The last outbreak of measles that originated in the Americas occurred in Venezuela in 2002, PAHO said. Before a separate, worldwide vaccination drive against measles began in the 1980s, the disease caused 2.6 milliondeaths a year worldwide — 12,000 of them in the Americas, according to PAHO. Measles is the fifth vaccine-preventable disease to be eliminated in the Americas — after smallpox in 1971, poliomyelitis in 1994, and rubella and congenital rubella syndrome in 2015, the PAHO said.

Source: CBC News September 27, 2016 19:28 UTC