Can measles become a memory?
Iread with jubilation the other day that New Zealand is the latest country to be named by the WHO as having officially eradicated ‘‘endemic’’ measles. We join a substantial list of other countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, but nonetheless this is an accolade to be proud of.
In this era of modern medicine and accessible vaccinations, it is very easy to forget the impact that these diseases once had. Measles has been written about as far back as the 9th century by a doctor in Persia, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that physicians realised it was an infectious disease, capable of spreading rapidly between individuals.
When it first became notifiable in 1912, it was deadly and highly contagious – each year causing 400-500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalisations in the US alone. Almost all children in the developed world contracted measles.
Since the development of the measles vaccine in the 1960s, infection rates in the developed world have reduced dramatically, and the numbers of measlesrelated deaths have plummeted. Good news indeed! And a compelling argument for vaccinations.
The measles vaccine is given as two doses to children over 1, as part of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella). Although we currently have great uptake of the measles vaccination – around 90 per cent of our children are fully vaccinated against MMR – this wasn’t always the case.
In fact as recently as the 1990s there was a huge dropoff in numbers of children being vaccinated. This was in large part due to some very poorly designed research carried out in the UK that postulated a link between the vaccine and the development of autism spectrum disorder.
This research has since been completely discredited by scientists, and the author of the original report, Andrew Wakefield, has been struck off the medical register and banned from practising medicine. Too late, unfortunately, to prevent an outbreak of measles here a few years later, as unimmunised babies became exposed to the virus: the two biggest outbreaks in the 1990s led to thousands of cases, hundreds of hospitalisations and seven deaths.
So although I am thrilled to read that we are now ‘‘free of measles’’, this doesn’t mean that we can or should become complacent. What we have managed to eliminate is ‘‘endemic’’ measles, which means that no new cases have originated in New Zealand in the past three years.
What we remain at risk of is a measles outbreak originating elsewhere – and in this era of increasing travel, flying between countries is the perfect opportunity for an infectious disease to take hold again.
It is worth remembering that while we are lucky to be able to choose whether to vaccinate ourselves or our children, many of the residents of the countries we visit won’t have the luxury of any choice – and being unimmunised will be the normal state.
So being vaccinated continues to be your best method of defence against this potentially deadly disease, especially if you are considering travelling overseas.
If you can’t remember whether or not you were vaccinated as a child, I would recommend you go ahead and book – it is free, no matter what age you are, and will provide not only protection against measles (here or overseas), but also to rubella and mumps.
Dr Cathy Stephenson is a GP and forensic medical examiner.