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Once vaccination rates hit 98 percent, the chances of measles spreading drops to close to zero because there are too few people who can catch and pass on the virus, which can only spread person-to-person.
Photo by Tiffany Akins, Vancouver Coastal Health
Two more measles cases linked to French schools
Published 4:35 PST, Wed February 27, 2019
Last Updated: 2:12 PDT, Wed May 12, 2021
Two more cases of measles were announced by
Vancouver Coastal Health on Wednesday, bringing to 15 the total number of cases
this year.
“Both cases are related to the school
outbreak, and had been receiving follow-up care as they were known to have been
exposed to persons with measles infection,” health region spokesperson Tiffany
Akins said.
In three of the cases, people without
adequate immunity caught the measles outside Canada and brought it home with
them, Akins said.
A dozen of the 15 cases are related to the
outbreak in three Vancouver French schools where the first case was introduced
after a family vacation overseas.
The father of the child with the first school’s
case said he had consulted a tropical medicine clinic to get all special shots
for travel to Vietnam but measles was not suggested by the clinic.
He had chosen not to immunize the students
when they were babies because of fears of autism at the time. The father went
on to say that while he no longer fears vaccines, the family had not gotten
around to getting the children vaccinated against measles.
While the fears still exist, the science
supporting any connection does not. The physician who first wrote of the
supposed connection was exposed for falsifying information and for
conflict-of-interest because he had already filed for a patent for a rival
measles vaccine.
“We are very much into best practices,
promoting peer-reviewed materials that are again based on best practices. We do
not promote anti-vaccination materials at all,” said Anjela Godber, a
highly-trained professional at the Pacific Autism Family Network who is
familiar with both the science and realities of autism.
In the intervening years since the doctor
published his false claims, millions of mainly children have contracted
measles. The death rate for those who get measles in very poor countries is one
in 10.
“Even though a safe and cost-effective
vaccine is available, in 2017 there were 110,000 measles deaths globally,
mostly among children under the age of five,” the World Health Organization
said.
The good news is, vaccines work.
With increased uptake of measles vaccinations
in developing nations, nations where people remember the ravages of measles
infections, “measles vaccination resulted in an eight percent drop in measles
deaths between 2000 and 2017 worldwide,” WHO said.
Vaccinations affect the numbers, according to
WHO: “From 2000 to 2017, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 21.1
million deaths making measles vaccine one of the best buys in public health.”
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