Health Dept. urges vaccination to prevent measles
Vaccination is the safest, most effective way to prevent serious vaccine-preventable diseases in children and adults including measles.
Measles cases have been confirmed in 22 states. The Ohio Department of Health director Amy Acton, MD, MPH, reminds all Ohioans about the importance of children and adults being up-to-date on all recommended vaccinations. Ohio currently has no confirmed measles cases while neighboring states Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan do.
Vaccines stimulate the body’s immune system to protect the person against specific diseases. Some serious and potentially life-threatening diseases that vaccines can help prevent include but are not limited to measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, chickenpox, tetanus, hepatitis A and B, and flu.
“Vaccination is the safest, most effective way to prevent serious vaccine-preventable diseases in children and adults including measles,” Acton said. “I urge all Ohioans to talk with your health-care provider to make sure that you and your children have received all recommended vaccines. If you do not have a health-care provider, contact your local health department, which may offer immunization clinics.”
The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is highly effective at preventing transmission of measles. One dose of MMR vaccine is approximately 93 percent effective at preventing measles. Two doses are approximately 97 percent effective.
Measles is extremely contagious and can spread to others through coughing and sneezing. If one person has measles, up to 90 percent of those close to that person who are not immune also will become infected.
The measles virus can live for up to two hours in air where an infected person coughed or sneezed. If other people breathe the contaminated air or touch an infected surface and then touch their eyes, noses or mouths, they also can become infected.
People infected with measles can spread it to others from four days before through four days after a rash appears.
While Ohio does not have any confirmed measles cases, more than 700 have been reported in 22 states, the most cases reported in the U.S. since 1994.
Measles is still common in many parts of the world, and large outbreaks are currently occurring in Israel, Ukraine and the Philippines. Travelers with measles bring the disease into the U.S., where it can spread in communities with pockets of unvaccinated people.
Measles symptoms include a rash, high fever, runny nose, cough, loss of appetite and red, watery eyes. The rash usually lasts five to six days and begins at the hairline, moves to the face and upper neck, and proceeds down the body. Diarrhea and ear infections are common complications of measles. More severe complications also may occur.
As many as one out of every 20 children with measles gets pneumonia, the most common cause of death from measles in young children. About one child out of every 1,000 who gets measles will develop encephalitis (swelling of the brain), which can lead to convulsions and can leave the child deaf or with intellectual disability. For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die from it.
During pregnancy measles increases the risk of premature labor, miscarriage and low-birth-weight infants. Measles can be especially severe in persons with compromised immune systems. Complications from measles are more common among children younger than 5 years old and adults older than 20 years old.
ODH is sharing vaccination guidance and information with all its partners including local health departments, hospitals, health-care providers, k-12 educators and school nurses, higher education leaders, other state agencies, and faith-based organizations.
More information about measles is available on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website at www.cdc.gov.