US Doctors Concerned About The Emerging Diseases Measles.
Although measles has been nearly eliminated in the United States, outbreaks still chance here. And they're mostly triggered by people infected abroad, in countries where widespread vaccination doesn't exist, federal salubrity officials said Thursday. And while it's been 50 years since the introduction of the measles vaccine, the approvingly infectious and potentially fatal respiratory disease still poses a international threat. Every day some 430 children around the world die of measles.
In 2011, there were an estimated 158000 deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Measles is quite the unique most infectious of all infectious diseases," CDC director Dr Thomas Frieden said during an afternoon scuttlebutt conference. Dramatic progress has been made in eliminating measles, but much more needs to be done. "We are not anywhere near the wrap up line.
In a new study in the Dec 5, 2013 issue of the roll JAMA Pediatrics, CDC researcher Dr Mark Papania and colleagues found that the elimination of measles in the United States that was announced in 2000 had been continued through 2011. Elimination means no continuous disease transmitting for more than 12 months. "But elimination is not eradication. As long as there is measles anywhere in the men there is a threat of measles anywhere else in the world".
And "We have seen an increasing number of cases in recent years coming from a ample variety of countries. Over this year, we have had 52 separate, known importations, with about half of them coming from Europe". Before the US vaccination program started in 1963, an estimated 450 to 500 settle died in the United States from measles each year; 48000 were hospitalized; 7000 had seizures; and some 1000 rank and file suffered unending brain damage or deafness. Since widespread vaccination, there has been an unexceptional of 60 cases a year, Dr Alan Hinman, head for programs at the Center for Vaccine Equity of the Task Force for Global Health, said at the story conference.