Blind spot over measles threat
Health chiefs’ fear as uptake of MMR vaccinations falls
FOLLOWING the death of a man in his 40s from measles this week, the first reported case in Ireland in 2024, public health officials are urging people to get vaccinated in a bid to curb its spread.
The HSE’S Health Protection Surveillance Centre confirmed that the man died in a hospital in the Dublin and Midlands Health Region after contracting the disease.
The jab that prevents the onset of infection in individuals is called the MMR vaccine, an acronym for the diseases it protects against — measles, mumps and rubella.
The critical national MMR vaccination level, the rate of vaccination uptake that ensures national immunity, is 95 per cent, but the current rate within the Irish population is 89.2 per cent. It has now been below 90 per cent for six consecutive quarters, a first since 2008.
The Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health, Professor Breda Smyth, is calling on people to get the MMR vaccine in light of a recent report by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, which indicated an uptake of 17.9 per cent among those aged 18-19 in Ireland.
Public health teams and the recently established Measles National Incident Management Team are taking all necessary actions in relation to the recent death of the man from measles earlier this week, the HSE said.
EPIDEMIC
The potential for a nationwide Covid-like epidemic of the disease is, as of now, unlikely, due to the fact that Covid was a novel disease and, therefore, people were unvaccinated against it.
According to the HSE, national measles vaccination uptake rates every year vary between 80 per cent and 90 per cent, depending on the part of the country, falling short of the required rate for national immunity.
Measles immunisation was introduced in Ireland in 1985. Since that time, the uptake of the MMR vaccine has reached most children and the risk of measles infection in Ireland has decreased over time.
According to the HPSC, there were four measles cases reported in 2023, two cases reported in 2022, no cases in 2021 and five cases in 2020. There were no deaths from the virus reported in any of those years.
Continental Europe is currently experiencing an alarming rise in measles cases, an event which Dr Quique Bassat, Director General of the Barcelona Institute of Global Health, says should be a “memory, not a present risk”. A World Health Organisation advisor for vaccine-preventable diseases in Europe reports that the continent is seeing an almost 45-fold rise in cases — in 2022, there were 940 cases, and in 2023, it reached approximately 42,000.
WHAT IS MEASLES?
Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads easily though respiratory droplets and can lead to serious health complications.
In extreme cases, the virus can lead to death. However, the relatively high uptake of the MMR vaccine against it over the years has helped to stave off the occurrence of a serious outbreak in Ireland.
WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS?
Symptoms take seven to 14 days to appear. There is an increased chance that you have contracted the disease if you spot the following signs: High fever; cough; runny nose; red and watery eyes; small greyish-white spots in the mouth; loss of appetite and tiredness; irritability; general lack of energy; rash two to four days after first symptoms.
WHAT COMPLICATIONS CAN DEVELOP?
Encephalitis (swelling of the brain); pregnancy-related complications — unvaccinated mothers can give birth to premature or underweight babies; pneumonia; hospitalisation and death in children; complications including ear infections and diarrhoea, though these occur in less than one in 10 measles cases.
HOW MANY MMR VACCINES
DO I NEED?
Two doses of MMR vaccine will sufficiently protect you against measles. Children should get the first dose at 12 months of age, and the second at four or five.
The vaccine is completely safe and misinformation on its impact on autism rates in children is unfounded. Research has established that rates of autism are the same in groups of children who got the vaccine as they are in those who did not.