Uk 'eliminates Measles' For First Time

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41399850

A Good News story !

[jim360]

Good news. I wonder what could possibly have led to this astounding breakthrough.

[Islay]

Perhaps one of the medical professionals can explain why measles are so dangerous as I and all my siblings and my friends all have had measles.
Cheers

[Hopkirk]

I had measles and mumps at the same time. Spots on top of the lumps.

[Sqad]

Islay....I would love to explain, but a week or so ago I prepared what I considered an informed post, but the thread was withdrawn.
So as i feel it a waste of my time......measles is and was a dangerous condition.
Someone will surely come along with a link.

[jim360]

Because we have good healthcare in this country, it rather mitigates the risks of actually catching measles. In parts of Africa it's a killer. For example in the 1980s Measles was responsible for over 2.5 million deaths worldwide; now it's down to a mere 100,000 or so.

It's actually not necessarily that deadly on its own, but if you are young, malnourished, and without access to decent healthcare then it's very dangerous. And the other reason it's so deadly is that it's so common and contagious; apparently the average fatality rate is less than 1%, but if hundreds of millions of people suffer from it (as used to be the case) then it's still a huge health risk.

Mostly, and thanks to vaccination (as I knew in my heavily sarcastic first post) that's mostly in the past now.

[jno]

It used to be the #1 killer of children in the UK, so it's a reasonably big deal. Vaccination works. (MMR would tackle Hopkirk's Disease too.)

[hc4361]

In 1941 there were over 1100 deaths from measles in England and Wales.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measles-deaths-by-age-group-from-1980-to-2013-ons-data/measles-notifications-and-deaths-in-england-and-wales-1940-to-2013

In 1962 Roald Dahl's daughter died from measles because it caused her brain to swell -encephalitis.
http://vk.ovg.ox.ac.uk/blogs/ojohn/how-dangerous-measles

It is a very serious illness - hope it doesn't come back

[Islay]

Thanks strange really when you consider how we all had it!

[Sqad]

Islay....what's strange?

[hc4361]

Some people die from the flu, too, Islay. During the plagues that killed so many other people in close contact with the victims displayed no symptoms. It's just the luck, good and bad, of the draw.

[Peter Pedant]

quite a lot repeated here

https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Body-and-Soul/Question1571349-3.html

sort answers the q. why do some people die from measles

[Sqad]

h.c
You are absolutely correct.
Post war...the commonest cause of death in children was pneumonia, secondary to measles and even if they survived, they often led a life of coughs, chest infections and asthma.
In the 50's and 60's it was common to see young adults with cotton wool in their ears, smelly discharge and frequent trips to the ENT depts......why?.....as a consequence of measles. Now one sees far less of ear problems why? because of the MMR vaccine.
Encephalitis as h.c was also a complication which rarely lead to death, but the consequences may have been a lifetime of seizures and mental impairment.
Measles IS a severe disease.

[Mamyalynne]

Myself and my youngest brother were simply unwell with Measles , my other brother got it worse and was really quite poorly - they affected his eyes and I distinctly remember the curtains being closed for quite a time.

[mikey4444]

Sqad....I agree....measles can be ghastly. Which makes the situation over the MMR vaccine even more difficult to understand.

Where I live in South Wales, we had a severe outbreak of measles recently, mostly caused to a minority of parents thinking that they knew more about the MMR vaccine, then the medical profession did.

I understand that because of those outbreaks, almost all kids that were not vaccinated, then did get the shot, and not before time.

[Sqad]

mikey....I remember that outbreak.....and it was, indeed a wake up call.

[mikey4444]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Swansea_measles_epidemic

[albaqwerty]

I'm 54, had a jag at whatever age against them, had measles. - maybe about 5 or 6 yrs of age
Was a nasty thing from what I have vague memories of, darkened room, siblings being told to be very quiet

[jim360]

To be fair, measles probably stopped being ghastly in this country for long enough that most people no longer saw or knew the risks from personal experience. Look at Islay's post, for example: an entire family affected by measles but apparently shaken off rather like Chickenpox would be.

We can be very complacent about certain medical conditions. It comes from a good place, as it's a direct consequence of generally fantastic healthcare. But it's also rather a sad one when it leads to dodgy risk assessment, as happened in the MMR scare of the 90s. If you can see autism with your own eyes, but can't see measles (because it has been basically absent from the UK for a few decades) then you'll fear the one you can experience more than the (more serious) thing you don't. No one can get past that: it's just the human condition.

At the moment it seems that MMR uptake is close to maximal in the UK, but now Wakefield's dodgy stuff has passed to the US to be taken surprisingly seriously there, instead. So Measles might re-emerge from time to time in the US, for the same basic reason.

Humans are just really bad at understanding risk assessment, basically.

[Sqad]

You could often impress the parents of children BEFORE the rash, by identifying typical spots on the inside of the mouth called Koplik spots and then predicting that within 48hours the typical rash of measles would appear and clinch the diagnosis.

[Sqad]

True Jim.....but measles was VERY common and a "whole family" was statistically insignificant compared with the number of cases in an outbreak.
To give a practical example, a GP practice of 3,000 patients may well see 10 new cases of measles per day for a fortnight.....over 100 cases and that would be one practice. Clearly one would expect to see "families " without complications.