IN SPITE of the interest since 1941 in rubella as being one of the causes of congenital defects, it has not yet been recognized as a clinical or epidemiological entity in many countries in Africa, South and Central America, and Asia; and in a paper published in 1968 from a country in Europe it is stated that "we still ignore the possible role of rubella virus as a cause of congenital malformations in our country." Compared with, for example, a disease such as measles, it is not therefore surprising that there are few publications on the general epidemiology of rubella. Some do exist, and the number is increasing,1-7 but the papers often deal with limited areas of a single country or with special groups and do not in general lend themselves to international comparison and contrast.
There are however, two aspects of the epidemiology of rubella in which such