A medical analyst talks about the phenomenon of Measles

No Evidence of an Encounter with Measles in India, but a Study of an Indian Public Health System in Lucknow and Mumbai

Wen: It’s important to note that this incident in Kentucky is not yet considered an outbreak. Only one person has been diagnosed with measles. Some people were possibly exposed to other people at this gathering, but no one knows if any of them have been bitten by a bug.

Many states reported high rates of coverage, and officials hailed the campaign as a success. The current outbreak wasn’t mitigated by it. In Mumbai, which has had more than 400 reported cases and 8 fatalities this year, fewer than 65% of kids got their routine immunizations in 2022, Murhekar says. Statistics show that almost all of Mumbai’s unvaccinated children got supplementary vaccinations in 2011. The coverage was probably not as high.

One year of low vaccination coverage is unlikely to result in such a large outbreak, says Manoj Murhekar, an epidemiologist at the Indian Council of Medical Research in Chennai. “It is basically a cumulative phenomenon.”

Nature inquired about the immunization campaigns in the state of Lucknow and the city of Mumbai. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare did not answer questions about missing the deadline.

It is important to find epidemics and launch immunization campaigns. Although the disease is tracked by health officials in India, there’s no evidence of an outbreak because the tracking system is not consistent across the country.

India’s public-health system also tracks pregnant women — many of whom give birth at their parents’ home — and their infants. The system lost track of them after a few months. After that point, there’s a big drop-off in vaccinations for measles–rubella.

The tracking system can be used to miss children of migrant workers, says a public-health researcher in India.

Measles vaccine infection wellness: a conversation with Dr. Leana’s at the Milken Institute School of Public Health

Up to 20,000 people attended a religious gathering at a college in Kentucky in February that could have exposed them to the disease.

The CDC advises that if you attend the gathering on February 17 or 18 and you are unvaccinated or not fully vaccined, you should be put under a 21-day sterilization so that you don’t spread the disease to other people.

Measles is not only a concern for children. It can cause premature births in pregnant women. Immunocompromised people, such as cancer patients and those infected with HIV, are also at increased risk.

To answer some of the questions, I talked with Dr. Leana’s at the Milken Institute School of Public Health. Previously, she served as Baltimore’s health commissioner, where her duties included overseeing the city’s immunization and infectious disease investigations.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/health/measles-vaccine-infection-wellness/index.html

Why is the MMR vaccine so effective? A public health triumph and an important tool for preventing diseases that can be transmitted to children from infants to adults

Another reason why measles spreads so easily is its long incubation period. In infected people, the time from exposure to fever is an average of about 10 days, and from exposure to rash onset is about 14 days — but could be up to 21 days. In addition, infected people are contagious from four days before rash starts through four days after. That’s a long period of time where they could unknowingly infect others.

After an illness, symptoms usually appear within a couple of days. There are also small, painless white spots on the insides of the mouth that could be caused by diseases. A rash can start on the face and then spread down the neck, trunk, arms, legs and feet over a few days after these symptoms begin. The spots can become joined together as they spread and can be accompanied by a high fever.

One in five unvaccinated people with measles are hospitalized, according to the CDC. As many as 1 out of every 20 children with measles will get pneumonia; about 1 in 1,000 who get measles can develop encephalitis, a swelling of the brain that can lead to seizures and leave the child with lasting disabilities. And nearly 1 to 3 out of every 1,000 children who are infected with measles will die.

Wen: The MMR vaccine is an extremely safe and very effective vaccine and is recognized as a significant public health advance for preventing an otherwise extremely contagious disease from spreading and causing potentially very severe — even fatal — outcomes.

The vaccine was licensed in the US in 1963. In the four years before that, there were an average of more than 500,000 cases of measles every year and over 430 measles-associated deaths. There were 89 cases in 1998 and no deaths from the disease. That’s a huge public health triumph.

The recommended vaccine schedule is for young children. Older kids and adults who did not receive it should have that discussion with their health care provider. To stop preventable diseases from coming back, clinicians and public health officials in the US and around the world should increase their efforts to increase routine childhood immunizations.