SHOTS HEALTH NEWS – Measles kills thousands of children across the globe every year.
It’s a scourge that has afflicted mankind for more than a thousand years. And it’s what keeps Adam Ratner up at night: measles.
“It is the most infectious disease that we know by far — much more infectious than flu, much more infectious than COVID or polio or Ebola or anything else that I can think of,” says Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease physician in New York City.
In his new book, Booster Shots, Ratner makes the case that the control of measles is a test of how good our public health institutions are. And the fact that it is making a comeback is a bad sign.
“When vaccination levels start to fall, we see measles outbreaks first,” he says. “And then those are often followed by outbreaks of other vaccine preventable diseases, things that are a little less contagious than measles,” he say, adding, “It’s only February and we have already had, you know, small clusters of measles in Texas and Rhode Island and Georgia and a couple of other states.”
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Globally, it’s estimated that measles killed more than 107,000 children in 2023, mostly unvaccinated or under vaccinated children under the age of five. Last year, the U.S. had 284 measles cases — the highest number in five years. That comes as kindergarten vaccination rates against measles, mumps and rubella have dropped below the 95% threshold that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is needed to prevent community outbreaks.
The U.S. hasn’t reported a measles death since 2015. “But I think that with more cases, with larger outbreaks, that may change,” Ratner says.
Before the measles vaccine was developed in the early 1960s, the disease used to kill hundreds of children each year in the U.S. …