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Measles Outbreaks Make 2019 a Record-Setting Year

Carol Pearson

   WASHINGTON - The year 2019 saw a totally preventable disease claim the
   lives of more than 140,000 people, mostly children and babies. It
   happened as unvaccinated children created a pathway for measles
   outbreaks globally. Some of the outbreaks are still continuing.

   Samoan Emite Talaalevea lost her daughter. She says she never expected
   to see such grief.

   "I was shocked, it was very hard to me to accept what happened," she
   said.

   Measles claimed the lives of some 81 people on the island, mostly
   children and infants. Robert Linkins, an expert on measles in the
   Global Immunization Division at the Centers for Disease Control and
   Prevention, said the deaths were completely preventable.

   "Two shots of a vaccine could have saved those children's lives."

   The vaccination rate in Samoa dropped to about 30% after two children
   died from a measles vaccine that was mistakenly mixed with a muscle
   relaxant. People wrongly attributed the deaths to the vaccine, stopped
   vaccinating their children, then measles exploded on the island.

   Samoa has a population of 200,000. Some 5,600 people caught the virus.
   Linkins said because measles is so highly infectious, the disease
   spread rapidly.

   "The hospitals and health clinics were overrun with very sick children,
   and there weren't enough health care workers and hospital beds to
   adequately deliver the services that they needed," Linkins said.

   Medical teams went door-to-door with the vaccine. The goal was to get
   95% of the population vaccinated. The Samoan government, Linkins said,
   turned to the CDC for help in stemming the epidemic.

   "[The] CDC also was asked to do training of health care workers to
   ensure safe vaccine delivery, as well as to monitor the quality of the
   immunization campaign that took place," Linkins said.

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