The fact that some parents are choosing not to vaccinate their children isn’t new, unfortunately, but it’s increasingly concerning. “In otherwise healthy children, there’s absolutely no reason not to immunize kids,” Dr. Tosi says. “We saw rising cases of measles year after year before the pandemic happened,” Dr. Esper adds. “There has been a growing amount of […]
Measles outbreaks may occur as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, officials say, because some vaccination programmes are having to be delayed. Unicef says 117 million children in 37 countries may not get immunised on time. There have been several large outbreaks in countries across Europe where MMR vaccine uptake has been low. The UK […]
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British doctors and nurses are sacrificing a relaxing Christmas with friends and family to help save lives in a deadly measles outbreak on the other side of the world. The Pacific island of Samoa has been overwhelmed by more than 5,500 cases of the disease. Seventy-nine people have died, nearly all of them are children […]
More than 140,000 people died from measles last year as the number of cases around the world surged once again, official estimates suggest. Most of the lives cut short were children aged under five. The situation has been described by health experts as staggering, an outrage, a tragedy and easily preventable with vaccines. Huge progress […]
Measles has killed nearly 5,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2019, authorities said, after the disease spread to all the provinces in the country. Close to a quarter of a million people have been infected this year alone. The World Health Organization (WHO) says this is the world’s largest and fastest-moving epidemic. […]
Measles has a devastating impact on the body’s immune system that could make it harder to fight infections for years, a pair of studies show. The virus can cause “immune amnesia” – meaning the body forgets how to fight bugs it once knew how to beat. Measles also resets the immune system to a “baby-like” […]
Media playback is unsupported on your device Measles has returned to four European nations previously seen as free of the illness, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The disease is no longer considered eradicated in Albania, the Czech Republic, Greece and the UK. “We are backsliding, we are on the wrong track,” said Kate […]
Ariel Loop is a registered nurse who lives in Pasadena, California, with her husband and two kids, Mobius, age four, and Penrose, age two. In 2015 Loop and her husband took four-month-old Mobius—then their only child—to Disneyland, where they believe he caught the measles. SELF asked Loop to tell us the story of Mobius getting […]
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is ordering urgent action to ensure that children and young people in Britain are protected against measles. The disease can be stopped through two doses of the MMR vaccine, but immunisation rates have been falling for a number of reasons. And the UK has lost its measles-free status, three years after […]
An Israeli air flight attendant who fell ill with measles on an El Al flight from New York to Israel has died, Israeli media say. The 43-year-old woman became unwell on the flight in April. It is unclear where she contracted the disease. It is the third death third from measles in Israel since November, […]
A head teacher has written to parents to remind them to make sure their children are immunised after a measles outbreak at his school. Jim Adams wrote to parents after three cases were confirmed at Hobart High School, Loddon, Norfolk. “Measles can be a very serious illness and it is also highly infectious,” he wrote. […]
A significant increase in mumps cases and continuing outbreaks of measles in England have led to calls for people to ensure they are immunised. Public Health England said even one person missing their vaccinations was “too many”. There were 795 cases of mumps in the first three months of 2019, compared with 1,031 in the […]
WILLEMSTAD, Curacao (AP) — Authorities in Curacao on Saturday boarded a ship that arrived under quarantine to start vaccinating people to prevent a measles outbreak. Health officials said only those who already have been vaccinated or have previously had measles will be free to leave the 440-foot (134-meter) ship Freewinds, which belongs to the Church […]
I was one of nine students who caught measles at a Key Club conference in the Catskills in 1992. I was 17 and a junior in high school at the time. The outbreak made it into The New York Times and my family’s paper of record, Newsday. I saved the clippings and my dad recorded all the TV coverage. […]