10 Diseases That Used to Be Death Sentences
Urgent Warning To Patients Who Visited City's A&E After Exposure To Deadly Virus
AN URGENT warning has been issued to patients who visited a city's A&E department as they may have been exposed to measles.
The trust that runs University Hospital of North Durham (UHND) urged anyone who attended on May 24 to look out for symptoms.
3
The trust that runs University Hospital of North Durham (UHND) issued the warningCredit: Google3
Red rash spots are one of the unwanted effects of measlesPeople who attended between 9pm and midnight may have been exposed to the infection.
A spokesman for County Durham and Darlington's NHS trust said: "You (and anyone with you) may have had contact with a person who had measles.
"This means that if you (or your child if they were with you) are not fully vaccinated against measles with two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, you or your child may be at risk of developing measles."
The trust added: "You should speak to your GP or NHS 111 if you or your child get a high temperature with a cough, runny nose, sore red eyes or rash in the 3 weeks after attending the A&E at UHND at the same time as someone with measles.
"You should try to call your GP or NHS 111 before visiting them in person. This is to avoid spreading measles to others.
"Tell your doctor that you or your child attended the department between 21.00hrs and midnight on 24th May 2024 and that you may therefore have been in contact with someone who has measles.
"It can be difficult to know when to seek help if your child is unwell. If you are worried about your child, especially if they are aged under 2 years old, then you should seek medical help."
Measles infects the body through the respiratory tract, before spreading to cause a fever, cough and trademark rash.
Most read in Health
LIFELINE FOR BRITS
'Best' lung cancer drug halts tumours - giving YEARS to dying patients
MEDICAL MARVEL
My earliest memory is from the womb and I remember 95% of my life
SHOCK LOSS
Mum, 31, died by her newborn son's cot 'when her brain suddenly switched off'
JABS JOY
Dad is first of thousands to get personalised cancer jabs in life-saving NHS trialA red blotch first appears on the forehead, before spots rear their ugly heads all over the skin and inside the mouth.
The dreaded infection is considered highly contagious.
My daughter died 30 years after catching measles - help save lives with a simple jabThe scare comes with new measles cases surfacing around the country.
As of April, the total number of cases since 1 October 2023 was 1,109, according to government data.
A burst in cases towards the end of 2023 was driven by an breakout in Birmingham, with that now stabilising.
The West Midlands has accounted for nearly half of all cases since October.
Expert answers MMR questions
TO help deal with parental concerns, Professor Helen Bedford, a specialist in child public health at University College London, tells you all you need to know about the MMR vaccine.
When is the vaccine given?
The MMR vaccine is part of the NHS Routine Childhood Immunisation Programme.
It's typically given via a single shot into the muscle of the thigh or the upper arm.
The first dose is offered to children at the age of one (babies younger than this may have some protection from antibodies passed on from their mother, which start to wear off at about 12 months.)
The second dose is then offered to children aged three years and four months before they start school.
To check to see if you or your child have had the recommended two doses of MMR, you can look at their/your Personal Child Health Record, also known as the red book.
If you can't find the red book, call your GP and ask them for your vaccine records.
You are never too old to catch up with your MMR vaccine.
If you see from your vaccination records that you did not receive two doses as a child, you can book a vaccination appointment.
Is the vaccine safe?
The MMR vaccine is safe and effective at preventing measles, mumps and rubella.
In the UK, we started using the jab in 1988, so we have decades of experience using it.
The jab is made from much-weakened live versions of the three viruses.
This triggers the immune system to produce antibodies that are protective in the face of future exposure.
It takes up to three weeks after having the vaccine to be fully protected.
Like any vaccine, the MMR jab can cause side-effects, which are usually mild and go away very quickly.
This includes rash, high temperature, loss of appetite and a general feeling of being unwell for about two or three days.
There is also a very small chance children can have a severe allergic reaction.
But compared to the complications of measles, there is no contest that vaccination is by far the safest and most effective route to take.
Why was it linked with autism?
In 1998, Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues published a now-discredited paper in medical journal The Lancet.
The paper suggested that the MMR vaccine might be associated with autism and a form of bowel disease.
It led to a sharp decline in vaccination rates.
Even at the time, the research was considered poor.
The Lancet retracted the story in 2010 after Wakefield's article was found "dishonest" by the General Medical Council.
He was later struck off and subsequently, in 2011, the British Medical Journal declared the story fraudulent.
Does it contain ingredients from pigs?
There are two types of MMR jabs: One with gelatin (animal/pig collagen), and one without it.
For some religious groups, the inclusion of pig products is not acceptable.
Those people should ask for the vaccine without gelatin.
But now the government is concerned of cases rising in London.
In the four weeks following March 18, 40 per cent of cases were in the nation's capital, with the West Midlands in second at 25 per cent.
Around 12 per cent of cases were recorded in the East Midlands.
Most (63 per cent) contracting the infection are kids aged under 10.
Vaccine rates and rising casesThe UK was declared measles-free in 2017 but lost that status in 2018 as a drop in vaccination rates allowed for a resurgence of the virus across Europe.
Only 84 per cent of kids have had both MMR vaccine doses by age five; this figure needs to be above 90 per cent to stop outbreaks.
There were 1,603 suspected cases of measles in England and Wales in 2023, a sharp increase from 735 cases in 2022 and 360 in 2021.
Since January, the NHS, UKHSA and local authorities have been urging millions of parents and carers to book their children in for missed MMR vaccinations.
Between January 1 and March 24, there were a total of 360,964 MMR vaccinations delivered, the NHS figures show.
The main symptoms of measles
MEASLES is highly contagious and can cause serious problems in some people.
The infection usually starts with cold-like symptoms, followed by a rash a few days later.
The first signs include:
Small white spots may then appear inside the cheeks and on the back of the lips.
A rash tends to come next. This usually starts on the face and behind the ears before spreading to the rest of the body.
The spots are sometimes raised and join together to form blotchy patches. They are not normally itchy.
The rash looks brown or red on white skin. It may be harder to see on darker skin.
Complications are rare, but measles can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, blindness, seizures, and sometimes death.
Source: NHS
3
4 Ways Vaccine Skeptics Mislead You On Measles And More
Measles is on the rise in the United States. In the first quarter of this year, the number of cases was about 17 times what it was, on average, during the same period in each of the four years before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Half of the people infected— mainly children — have been hospitalized.
It's going to get worse, largely because a growing number of parents are deciding not to get their children vaccinated against measles as well as diseases like polio and pertussis. Unvaccinated people, or those whose immunization status is unknown, account for 80% of the measles cases this year. Many parents have been influenced by a flood of misinformation spouted by politicians, podcast hosts, and influential figures on television and social media. These personalities repeat decades-old notions that erode confidence in the established science backing routine childhood vaccines. KFF Health News examined the rhetoric and explains why it's misguided:
The No-Big-Deal TropeA common distortion is that vaccines aren't necessary because the diseases they prevent are not very dangerous, or too rare to be of concern. Cynics accuse public health officials and the media of fear-mongering about measles even as 19 states report cases.
For example, an article posted on the website of the National Vaccine Information Center — a regular source of vaccine misinformation — argued that a resurgence in concern about the disease "is 'sky is falling' hype." It went on to call measles, mumps, chicken pox, and influenza "politically incorrect to get."
Measles kills roughly 2 of every 1,000 children infected, according to the CDC. If that seems like a bearable risk, it's worth pointing out that a far larger portion of children with measles will require hospitalization for pneumonia and other serious complications. For every 10 measles cases, one child with the disease develops an ear infection that can lead to permanent hearing loss. Another strange effect is that the measles virus can destroy a person's existing immunity, meaning they'll have a harder time recovering from influenza and other common ailments.
Measles vaccines have averted the deaths of about 94 million people, mainly children, over the past 50 years, according to an April analysis led by the World Health Organization. Together with immunizations against polio and other diseases, vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives globally.
Some skeptics argue that vaccine-preventable diseases are no longer a threat because they've become relatively rare in the U.S. (True — due to vaccination.) This reasoning led Florida's surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, to tell parents that they could send their unvaccinated children to school amid a measles outbreak in February. "You look at the headlines and you'd think the sky was falling," Ladapo said on a News Nation newscast. "There's a lot of immunity."
As this lax attitude persuades parents to decline vaccination, the protective group immunity will drop, and outbreaks will grow larger and faster. A rapid measles outbreak hit an undervaccinated population in Samoa in 2019, killing 83 people within four months. A chronic lack of measles vaccination in the Democratic Republic of the Congo led to more than 5,600 people dying from the disease in massive outbreaks last year.
Keep up with Tampa Bay's top headlinesSubscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter
We'll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every morning.
Loading...
You're all signed up!Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let's get started.
Explore all your options The 'You Never Know' TropeSince the earliest days of vaccines, a contingent of the public has considered them bad because they're unnatural, as compared with nature's bounty of infections and plagues. "Bad" has been redefined over the decades. In the 1800s, vaccine skeptics claimed that smallpox vaccines caused people to sprout horns and behave like beasts. More recently, they blame vaccines for ailments ranging from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to autism to immune system disruption. Studies don't back the assertions. However, skeptics argue that their claims remain valid because vaccines haven't been adequately tested.
In fact, vaccines are among the most studied medical interventions. Over the past century, massive studies and clinical trials have tested vaccines during their development and after their widespread use. More than 12,000 people took part in clinical trials of the most recent vaccine approved to prevent measles, mumps, and rubella. Such large numbers allow researchers to detect rare risks, which are a major concern because vaccines are given to millions of healthy people.
To assess long-term risks, researchers sift through reams of data for signals of harm. For example, a Danish group analyzed a database of more than 657,000 children and found that those who had been vaccinated against measles as babies were no more likely to later be diagnosed with autism than those who were not vaccinated. In another study, researchers analyzed records from 805,000 children born from 1990 through 2001 and found no evidence to back a concern that multiple vaccinations might impair children's immune systems.
Nonetheless, people who push vaccine misinformation, like candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., dismiss massive, scientifically vetted studies. For example, Kennedy argues that clinical trials of new vaccines are unreliable because vaccinated kids aren't compared with a placebo group that gets saline solution or another substance with no effect. Instead, many modern trials compare updated vaccines with older ones. That's because it's unethical to endanger children by giving them a sham vaccine when the protective effect of immunization is known. In a 1950s clinical trial of polio vaccines, 16 children in the placebo group died of polio and 34 were paralyzed, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and author of a book on the first polio vaccine.
The Too-Much-Too-Soon TropeSeveral bestselling vaccine books on Amazon promote the risky idea that parents should skip or delay their children's vaccines. "All vaccines on the CDC's schedule may not be right for all children at all times," writes Paul Thomas in his bestselling book "The Vaccine-Friendly Plan." He backs up this conviction by saying that children who have followed "my protocol are among the healthiest in the world."
Since the book was published, Thomas' medical license was temporarily suspended in Oregon and Washington. The Oregon Medical Board documented how Thomas persuaded parents to skip vaccines recommended by the CDC, and reported that he "reduced to tears" a mother who disagreed. Several children in his care came down with pertussis and rotavirus, diseases easily prevented by vaccines, wrote the board. Thomas recommended fish oil supplements and homeopathy to an unvaccinated child with a deep scalp laceration, rather than an emergency tetanus vaccine. The boy developed severe tetanus, landing in the hospital for nearly two months, where he required intubation, a tracheotomy, and a feeding tube to survive.
The vaccination schedule recommended by the CDC has been tailored to protect children at their most vulnerable points in life and minimize side effects. The combination measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine isn't given for the first year of a baby's life because antibodies temporarily passed on from their mother can interfere with the immune response. And because some babies don't generate a strong response to that first dose, the CDC recommends a second one around the time a child enters kindergarten because measles and other viruses spread rapidly in group settings.
Delaying MMR doses much longer may be unwise because data suggests that children vaccinated at 10 or older have a higher chance of adverse reactions, such as a seizure or fatigue.
Around a dozen other vaccines have discrete timelines, with overlapping windows for the best response. Studies have shown that MMR vaccines may be given safely and effectively in combination with other vaccines.
'They Don't Want You to Know' TropeKennedy compares the Florida surgeon general to Galileo in the introduction to Ladapo's new book on transcending fear in public health. Just as the Roman Catholic inquisition punished the renowned astronomer for promoting theories about the universe, Kennedy suggests that scientific institutions oppress dissenting voices on vaccines for nefarious reasons.
"The persecution of scientists and doctors who dare to challenge contemporary orthodoxies is not a new phenomenon," Kennedy writes. His running mate, lawyer Nicole Shanahan, has campaigned on the idea that conversations about vaccine harms are censored and the CDC and other federal agencies hide data due to corporate influence.
Claims like "they don't want you to know" aren't new among the anti-vaccine set, even though the movement has long had an outsize voice. The most listened-to podcast in the U.S., "The Joe Rogan Experience," regularly features guests who cast doubt on scientific consensus. Last year on the show, Kennedy repeated the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
Far from ignoring that concern, epidemiologists have taken it seriously. They have conducted more than a dozen studies searching for a link between vaccines and autism, and repeatedly found none. "We have conclusively disproven the theory that vaccines are connected to autism," said Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist at the University of Wollongong in Australia. "So, the public health establishment tends to shut those conversations down quickly."
Federal agencies are transparent about seizures, arm pain, and other reactions that vaccines can cause. And the government has a program to compensate individuals whose injuries are scientifically determined to result from them. Around 1 to 3.5 out of every million doses of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine can cause a life-threatening allergic reaction; a person's lifetime risk of death by lightning is estimated to be as much as four times as high.
"The most convincing thing I can say is that my daughter has all her vaccines and that every pediatrician and public health person I know has vaccinated their kids," Meyerowitz-Katz said. "No one would do that if they thought there were serious risks."
• • •
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.
Measles And The Cost Of Vaccine Hesitancy
Measles was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, meaning that there was no sustained transmission. Yet outbreaks of measles in the United States have continued to occur, with the most recent reported in 2024. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 131 cases of measles in 21 jurisdictions have been reported this year alone. Eight outbreaks—defined as three or more related cases—have occurred. The majority of these cases impact children under 5 years old, and 81% were not vaccinated against the virus. Larger outbreaks are occurring in the UK, parts of Europe, and throughout the world.
Measles is a serious illness that can cause a variety of complications. It is an airborne and extremely infectious disease that can spread readily to unvaccinated individuals and children who are too young to be vaccinated. The virus causes fever and rash that begins on the face, behind the ears, and spreads down to the chest, back, and feet. Infection occurs in stages. No symptoms occur for 10 to 14 days after exposure, followed by fever, often with cough, runny nose and conjunctivitis. After three to four more days, the rash appears.
Symptoms can include:
Measles was first reported in North America in 1765. It became a nationally notifiable disease in the U.S. In 1912, which allowed it to be tracked. It was responsible for sickening about three to four million people—mostly children—and killing about 6,000 people each year until the vaccine was developed in 1963. The vaccine worked so well in the prevention and spread of measles—97% effective with two doses—that in 2000, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S.
"Vaccines protect our children against these dangerous and sometimes deadly diseases," says Andrew Pavia, MD, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine at the University of Utah. "As parents, we want more than anything to protect our children."
Yet, while a vaccine for measles has been available since 1963, resistance has always existed. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine hesitancy increased, fueled in part by misinformation and political tensions. Vaccination rates have since fallen throughout the country, and many areas, including Utah, are now below the 95% vaccination threshold that generally prevents the spread of measles. That has opened the door for increasing measles cases in the U.S. And made our region vulnerable.
In the U.S., children entering school are required to get a number of vaccinations, including the MMR, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella.
"These requirements are because of the risk not just to your child but also to other children in school, especially those who cannot be vaccinated or don't respond to vaccines," Pavia says. However, there are some exemptions for these vaccines. "Children who cannot safely be vaccinated for medical reasons are granted exemptions in all 50 states," Pavia says. "Most states offer exemptions for religious reasons and some for philosophical exemptions."
Many factors have contributed to delayed vaccination of children. Some parents have been concerned that children receive too many vaccines. Others have been influenced by false information that exaggerates vaccine risks. Misinformation and intentional spread of disinformation have only increased with the rise of social media. Some parents are simply overwhelmed by multiple conflicting voices and don't know what to believe.
Careful studies have not shown any harmful impacts from the number of vaccines that children receive. "It is understandable to ask if getting several vaccines at the same time is 'too many challenges,'" Pavia acknowledges. "However, children are exposed to hundreds of new proteins during birth, and every time they have a cold, put a toy in their mouth, or are exposed to dirt, their immune systems are designed to deal with this. The number of new proteins they are exposed to even when getting multiple vaccines is a fraction of what they are exposed to naturally."
"All of the research to date suggests that getting vaccines together is safe, and it is more humane than spreading out the number of injections."
Andrew Pavia, MDPavia says he understands why parents may have questions about vaccines, especially at a time when they are in the headlines. "Part of the problem is that the media likes to find a story with conflict, and they often look for people who oppose vaccines to provide a counterpoint, regardless of whether they are knowledgeable or credible," he says. "This gives a false impression that there is a lot of doubt or controversy when, in fact, very little exists."
Pavia also says that while the public at large is exposed to the debate, very few are actually exposed to the reality of infectious disease. "Most parents with young children are now too young to remember vaccine-preventable diseases, and so they are no longer scared of diseases like measles, whooping cough, or meningitis," he says. "As a young infectious disease doctor, I knew these diseases well and saw the devastating effect on otherwise healthy children. When my children were younger, I could not wait to get them their vaccines."
Parenting is full of hard decisions. Whether or not to protect them from disease shouldn't be one of them. "Vaccines are the one of the best things we can do to protect them," Pavia says. "It is simply a fact."
Comments
Post a Comment