Opinion: How physicians should talk to parents of unvaccinated children who have contracted measles
What physician Adam Ratner learned when talking to the parents of unvaccinated children who contracted measles during the 2018-2019 New York City outbreak.
The ongoing measles outbreak in west Texas and a neighboring county in New Mexico has grown to more than 200 cases, concentrated in unvaccinated children. Twenty-three people have required hospitalization, and, tragically, a previously healthy, unvaccinated 6-year-old has died of the disease. An adult with measles in neighboring Lea County, New Mexico, has also died.
Measles is the most contagious disease known, spreading through unvaccinated populations with unmatched efficiency. It is also eminently vaccine-preventable. The live-attenuated measles vaccine was developed in the late 1950s — catalyzed by the technological breakthroughs that enabled polio vaccine development — and licensed in 1963. More than 60 years later, and a quarter-century after measles was declared eliminated from the United States, we find ourselves fighting the same viral foe and hoping to avoid losing more children to a preventable disease.
