Ignorance Spreads Measles

The United States is suffering its worst measles outbreak in at least seven years, health officials announced Thursday, because parents who fear the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot aren’t vaccinating their kids–in Israel, Switzerland, and here in the U.S. So far this year at least 70 cases have been reported, more than any year since the 116 cases of 2001. That number will easily be topped by the end of the year, said Dr. Anne Schuchat, head of the CDC’s Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. There have been measles cases reported in 10 states this year. In the latest outbreak, eight unvaccinated children in a Washington state family fell ill after relatives attended an international church conference.

Nearly all the cases have been tracked by molecular fingerprinting to outbreaks of disease in Europe, Israel and Asia. An outbreak in Switzerland that has struck more than 2,000 people, and one in Israel affecting 1,000-plus patients, began in communities who don’t vaccinate for philosophical or religious reasons. These threads of belief have also fed the outbreaks here. At least a quarter and as many as half of the patients were not vaccinated because their parents had exempted them from vaccination.

Twenty of the patients were too young, or barely old enough to be vaccinated. It is in these young children, under 15 months of age, in which the disease is most serious. Many of these babies and toddlers were hospitalized. Measles is extremely contagious–you can get it sitting in a room where a sick child sat two hours earlier–and potentially deadly. The vaccine, when given in two doses, is 99 percent effective. Only one of the 72 cases reported Thursday occurred in a fully vaccinated person.

The measles vaccine became available first in 1963. In the pre-vaccine era, 3-4 million American kids contracted measles each year; about 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized and another 1,000 suffered permanent brain damage. In the last big outbreak, in 1989-1991, there were 122 deaths. Then, most of the measles struck inner-city kids too poor to afford vaccines. Now, vaccines are free to those who need them, and the patients tend to be well-to-do people who think vaccination is dangerous. A British doctor claimed in 1998 that the MMR shot caused autism, creating a scare that has diminished vaccination rates around the world, though he’s been conclusively proved wrong.