Canuck Gal

..Than Ignorance In Action” (Goethe)

From WebMD August 21st, 2008..

Measles Outbreaks.. (in part, emphasis mine)

Measles Outbreaks Worry CDC

Surge in Measles Cases Blamed on Parents Who Won’t Vaccinate Kids

By Daniel J. DeNoon
WebMD Health News

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Aug. 21, 2008 — CDC officials worry that a surge in U.S. measles outbreaks means a return of the disease to American shores.

In 2000, the CDC declared that measles no longer was spreading in the U.S. Since then, there have been an average of 63 cases a year that come from infections acquired outside the U.S.

But as of July of this year, there have already been 131 U.S. measles cases. The number of imported cases hasn’t gone up, but the disease is spreading much more readily. Four-fifths of the cases came in seven measles outbreaks.

Who’s spreading the disease? It’s largely children who don’t get vaccinated because their parents hold “philosophical or religious beliefs” against vaccination, the CDC says.

“Even with our current extremely high vaccination rates, we could have significant pockets of people in outbreaks. And if vaccine coverage levels fall, we risk many more outbreaks. We are concerned,” Jane Seward, MB, MPH, deputy director of the CDC’s viral disease division, said at a news conference.

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This year’s two biggest measles outbreaks came in Washington State and in Illinois.

In Washington, an unvaccinated child likely caught measles at a church conference attended by 3,000 junior high school students, some from foreign nations. That child infected seven other children in her household; they spread measles to 11 other people. Of the 19 cases, 16 were school-age children. Eleven of these kids were homeschooled; none was vaccinated because of their parents’ beliefs.

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Very high coverage rates are necessary because measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to man. If a person with measles coughs in a room of 100 unvaccinated people, Seward says, 90 to 95 of those people will get the measles.

And many of these people would get very ill. Uncomplicated measles is a serious illness, but some kids who get the illness come down with life-threatening encephalitis or pneumonia. In the years before vaccination became common, a few children each year developed a very rare measles complication called subacute sclerotic panencephalitis — a degenerative brain disease that is almost always fatal but which can take up to 10 years to kill.

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Most at risk are people who can’t take the measles vaccine — very young children and people suffering cancer or immune disorders.

Fortunately, none of the U.S. measles cases this year has been fatal, although 15 people were hospitalized — including four babies under 15 months of age. But there were two deaths in Europe this year, one in Italy and one in the U.K.

The increase in measles outbreaks is a direct result of the parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.

It is not, as some of these parents would argue, a result of poor nutrition or the “Big Pharma” propaganda machine that would see these faceless conspirators put poison into our childrens’ bodies simply to make money.

How many preventable deaths will be too many?

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“Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” ~ Isaac Asimov

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