This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Measles: May It Go the Way of Smallpox and the Saber Tooth Tiger Dr. Scott Breidbart, Chief Medical Officer, Empire BlueCross BlueShield

Measles:  May It Go the Way of Smallpox and the Saber Tooth Tiger

Dr. Scott Breidbart, Chief Medical Officer, Empire BlueCross BlueShield

 

Find out what's happening in Bed-Stuywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Those of us born after the second Eisenhower administration, and lucky enough to live in the United States, have probably never seen a case of measles.  It is not a nice disease.  Under the best of circumstances, the patient feels miserable for about a week with a high fever often exceeding 104 degrees Fahrenheit, a rash, a cough, and aches.  Among healthy people in wealthy nations, 1 in a thousand get brain damage, and another 1 per thousand die.  In less advantaged circumstances, say among malnourished children in Africa, up to 25% of patients die. 

 

Find out what's happening in Bed-Stuywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Though measles killed Cotton Mather’s wife and three of his children, and killed 4,000 Union soldiers and possibly even more Confederate soldiers, by the 1950’s the number it was killing yearly in America fell to about 500.  So why the clamor for a vaccine?  First of all, 500 children dying a year is a tragedy, especially when it can be prevented.  Secondly, everyone got the disease.  You couldn’t keep your child safe by spending the summer in the mountains, or the winter in Nice, or by avoiding public gatherings.  Thirdly, once your child got the disease, he or she was going to miss school for a week, and you were going to miss work for a week.  You would be scared that your child would die or suffer brain damage.  Your child would be miserable, and therefore you would be also.  And just when your child recovered and was ready to go back to school, your next child would come down with it.  When the measles vaccine debuted in 1963, it was an instant hit.  People knew about measles and were eager to prevent it.

 

If the measles vaccine is one of our great successes, it is also one of our great failures.  It highlights the disparity in health care between rich and poor.  Not in the U.S., thank goodness, where almost universal childhood insurance guarantees that just about all children can and do get the vaccine, but in less developed countries that have many areas that do not get the vaccine.  As recently as 2008, well over 150,000 people, mainly children, died of measles. 

 

There is hope that measles will go the way of smallpox and the saber-tooth tiger.  Measles has no animal reservoir, which means that if we vaccinate almost everyone in the world, we can wipe out measles.  Red Cross volunteers and others, often from areas hard hit by measles, are working to this end.  The World Health Organization member states have all agreed to target 2020 as the date we can eliminate measles.  If we are successful, this will be the second disease, after smallpox, to have been eradicated.  There will be one less fear for parents, and one fewer vaccine for children.

 

Empire BlueCross BlueShield is New York’s largest health insurer, serving more than 5 million New Yorkers

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?