Kyiv resident Julia Buchak is a conscientious parent to her two daughters, Sofia, eight, and Zoryana, three. Part of her responsible parenting, she believes, is to decide not to vaccinate them.

“Everyone has a right to their own philosophy,” she says of her decision. 

International organizations and governments responsible for public health would disagree. Because of falling vaccination rates, infectious diseases like measles are making a global come-back. Ukraine is one of the hardest hit countries, with the fastest recent rise in measles in the world — more than 115,000 cases and 40 deaths since an outbreak started in 2017. 

The acting Ukrainian health minister described the crisis as a national security threat. The World Health Organization has identified “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the world’s top ten health threats for 2019. And the U.N. children’s fund UNICEF has named misinformation, mistrust and complacency as the “the real infection” behind the re-emergence of preventable diseases.