Measles Emergency Announced in Washington - ForumDaily
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Measles emergency declared in Washington

A measles outbreak in Washington state has prompted a state of emergency as rising numbers of anti-vaxxers have led to widespread spread of the virus, affecting at least 25 children and one adult.

Фото: Depositphotos

On Friday, the Washington state governor announced a public health emergency because of a measles outbreak that affected at least 25 children, writes The Daily Mail.

Cases of the disease are mostly limited to Clark County, Washington, but in the neighboring King County, there is already one case of illness in an adult.

Measles is a disease that is transmitted very quickly and spreads widely. Measles is prevented by vaccination, but Washington is one of 18 US states that allows non-medical exemptions from vaccinations. The state has one of the highest rates of unvaccinated children in the United States.

The legal clearance and the recent rise of the anti-vaxxer movement are fueling the spread of the potentially deadly disease - and experts say the situation will only get worse in the coming months.

Measles was once a disease that every child suffered once in their lifetime. The vast majority contracted measles before the age of 15, with a characteristic blotchy rash, sore throat, high fever, cough, runny nose and watery eyes.

Not everyone survived. Before the introduction of the vaccine in the US, measles died every year from 400 to 500 children, and another thousand had brain edema, which could lead to irreparable consequences.

But in the 1960s, a vaccine was created that usually also combines a vaccine against mumps (mumps) and rubella (MMR in the post-Soviet space and MMR in the USA). Since then, vaccination has been recommended for all children over 12 months of age.

The development of a measles vaccine dramatically reduced the number of cases, and by the year 1981, the annual measles incidence rates in the US had dropped by 80%. For the most part, this trend has continued. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that in the period from 2000 to 2016, a million of measles deaths were prevented from 20,4 year.

These lives were saved as a direct result of vaccination. But some parents oppose vaccinations, and their number has increased over the past decade.

For example, in one Idaho district, 25% of children in kindergartens are not vaccinated. These rates are highest in states where laws have been passed that allow exemption from vaccinations for non-medical reasons, including in Washington.

In King County, where one adult has already contracted measles, 940 children used non-medical vaccine benefits between 2016 and 2017—the third-highest rate in the country. Nearly 5% of child care centers in the state had such exemptions in the 2017-2018 school year, and nearly all children who contracted measles were not vaccinated, according to the Washington Department of Public Health.

“This should never have happened,” says Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “This is a consequence of the aggressive “anti-vaxxer” lobby, which is very active in the state. This epidemic is clearly going to grow and continue for some time,” he says.

Now, even in online “anti-vaxxer” communities, parents are beginning to express concerns about protecting their children, but still do not plan to vaccinate them, fearing (US medical science says these fears are largely unfounded) that vaccines are linked to autism or may “change » their children.

But the bigger problem is that vaccines don't just protect individual children—they reduce the risk of measles for the entire community through what's known as herd immunity.

“I am particularly concerned that children under 12 months are too young to be vaccinated and are particularly vulnerable,” says Dr. Hotez. “Parents of children will have to sit within four walls to prevent infection,” he adds.

“This is one of the ways that anti-vaxxers actually restrict the civil liberties of parents and their children.”

Public health officials, school districts and lawmakers will need to take steps to curb the spread of measles and its subsequent outbreaks.

“School systems are going to have to come to grips with the fact that if measles continues, they'll have to close [some schools], and that's probably something they're discussing right now,” Dr. Hotez says.

Public health officials may recommend that parents vaccinate their children at nine months of age and then vaccinate again 12 months later. But that won't help the larger anti-vaxxer movement in the state.

“When this happened in California after they allowed non-medical benefits in 2014 and 2015, legislators woke up and said, no, we're not doing this anymore,” Hotez explains. “I hope we are at the same key point.”

Even so, he expects the worst is yet to come as peak measles season is late winter and early spring.

“Let's see if we can reverse this terrible flow,” the doctor adds.

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