Measles is in the news yet again

The purpose of this article is to communicate a sense of urgency to healthcare providers, particularly those in the United States, to not take recent news reports of new outbreaks of measles in some parts of the country lightly. Measles is a highly contagious killer disease with no racial or age discriminations. It can have disastrous effects on the quality of life of the patients, their families, and the country. Before implementation of the National Measles Vaccination program in 1963, approximately 500,000 persons in the United States were reported to have had measles every year, of whom 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and another 1,000 had permanent brain damage (Seward, 2014). Through an effective two-dose measles vaccination program, measles was curtailed in the United States, and in the year 2000, measles was declared eliminated from the country. “Eliminated” means the absence of continuous transmission of measles for 12 months or more in a specific geographic area. While it is obvious that measles is no longer endemic in the United States, measles is imported into the country every year, mostly by US residents returning from travel abroad. This is probably responsible for the 107 newly confirmed cases in 21 states as of July 14, 2018 (Chodosh, 2018). If the figures from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention are to be believed (and they are), then chances are high that no matter where you are in the country, a case of measles might just show up in your consulting room.