In April of last year, a North Carolina resident developed a fever and rash shortly after returning from a trip to India. He had contracted measles abroad, and by the end of May, the North Carolina Division of Public Health identified 22 more cases of measles in the area. Many of those infected, including the initial patient, had not been vaccinated against the disease.
This was the largest outbreak of measles in North Carolina in over 20 years, and we weren鈥檛 alone. In 2013, there were , marking it as the second largest number of outbreaks since measles was eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. A little over a quarter of the outbreaks were traced to unvaccinated individuals who had picked up the virus while traveling abroad. The disease, which is highly contagious, is then spread through actions like sneezing and coughing.
Measles isn鈥檛 the only viral infection making a comeback these days. Just yesterday, health officials announced that , and in 2010, over 9,000 people contracted 鈥渨hooping cough鈥� in California which led to the .
There鈥檚 even concern that polio may re-appear.
Over the past few months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been trying to manage an outbreak of polio cases in Syria that resulted from the war鈥檚 disruption on vaccination programs. In today鈥檚 age of international travel, it鈥檚 only a matter of time before polio hops into our country. Indeed, it may have already done so - there have been in the past year and a half.
The good news is vaccines for all of these diseases have been around since the 1970s, and they work. The bad news is that vaccination rates have dropped in the last decade in a large part due to the anti-vaccination movement. Though all of the reasons cited by 鈥渁nti-vaxxers鈥� including , the misunderstanding persists.
published in the medical journal Pediatrics presents more bad news. The study conducted a randomized trial to test four different ways of educating parents on the need and benefits of vaccinations, and the results were alarming:
- None of the interventions successfully increased the parents鈥� intention of vaccinating their children.
- Worse, some of the interventions, such as showing pictures of children suffering from the preventable diseases, actually increased parents鈥� fear of vaccination side effects.
鈥婽he study highlights a frightening public health issue. Protection against these deadly diseases depends on a significant portion of the population being vaccinated, and if people won鈥檛 (or can鈥檛 due to weakened immune systems) troubling times may be ahead.
