February 6, 2015

Avoiding the Measles Vaccine May be Fatal for Children

Photo by Anna Kolosyuk on Unsplash

The Measles vaccine has been a controversial issue in the news recently. Parents have strong and widely varied opinions on whether or not they should vaccinate their children. Many parents would like to avoid vaccines all together because of potential side effects – but after the measles outbreak linked to Disneyland in California, experts are recommending that all children be vaccinated for their own safety and the safety of others.

The CDC has recently released guidelines on what parents need to know regarding vaccinating their kids. School is starting soon and many schools require vaccinations as a state requirement. Vaccinations, the CDC says, are one of the most important things you can do as a parent to ensure your child’s health and safety and parents that choose not to vaccinate their children increase the risk of disease not only for their own children, but also for other children and adults throughout the community.

Yesterday, a Chicago-area day care center learned that two infants who attend the center in Palatine, Illinois tested positive for measles. The day care center immediately notified all parents, and any child who has not received the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine has been ordered to stay at home and away from anyone else who hasn’t been vaccinated for at least 21 days.

Experts aren’t yet clear on whether these new cases are linked to the previous outbreaks in California and Cook County. What is clear, though, is that the children who have the disease had not received the vaccine. According to the Public Health Department, the children were too young to be vaccinated (the MMR vaccine is generally not given to children under the age of 1).

If the safety factor of vaccines is something you’ve debated about in the past, here is your answer.

Measles is a respiratory disease that is highly contagious from about four days before symptoms occur through about four days after symptoms clear up. This disease is very contagious because it can linger on surfaces – even in the air – for up to two hours, and it spreads quickly through coughing and sneezing.

Until recently, the disease was relatively rare in the US – but these days, controversy over the potential dangers of vaccines is causing even bigger problems.