by Brad Gascoigne, M.D
LEO
August 28, 2002

There are communities in this world where the parents won't give their child a name until he or she survives the measles. Well-nourished infants rarely die from measles. But in developing countries, 800,000 children each year die from the disease.

Amazingly, in the United States we now have only about 100 cases per year of measles with no measles-related deaths. In Kentucky there were only two cases of measles reported in 2001. Tennessee had no reported cases. Indiana had four cases. Ohio had three.

These figures contrast with the 1950s and 1960s, when annual measles cases in the United States numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Many of these children would develop complications such as pneumonia or encephalitis of the brain.

Then came an effective vaccine, licensed in the mid-1960s, and cases plummeted. By 1980, fewer than 10,000 cases per year were occurring.

However, measles has proven to be a tough disease to totally eliminate. It wasn't until the early 1990s, when many states began requiring a second dose of the measles vaccine for school attendance, that the number of cases dropped to near extinction levels.

Today in the United States the vaccine is usually given as the MMR (Measles-Mumps-Rubella) combination vaccine. Recently, three talented high school students - Margeaux Gagliano, Chris LiPuma and R.J. McKee - organized a fund-raising event in Cleveland on behalf of a global effort, termed "The Measles Initiative," to eradicate this disease. The program was extremely well received.

The featured speaker at the event was Dr. Mark Grabowsky, who is on loan from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and serving as senior adviser to the American Red Cross for this international effort. (For a full description, see www.Measiesinitiative.org.) Before hearing his remarks, I thought an 80- to 90-percent reduction in measles deaths worldwide by the end of this decade was an ambitious goal. After hearing about the resources mobilizing behind this effort, I can't see any good reason that 99 percent of these deaths can't be eliminated.

Check back in 2010.

In the meantime, make sure that your own children and grandchildren have had their two MMR shots.

Contact the writer at leo@leoweekly.com