Since a Texas child died from measles-related complications on Tuesday, doctors have been urging Texans to vaccinate their children as the outbreak spreads across the state.
“This is a big deal,” Dr. Amy Thompson, CEO at Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock County where the death occurred, told the Dallas Morning News. “We have known that we’ve had measles in our community. We’re now seeing a very serious consequence of what happens when we have measles in our community.”
This sentiment was echoed by Dr. Peter Hotez, the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital and the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
“Once you get this big an epidemic, and you get numbers up in hundreds or more, it’s almost inevitable you’ll see a childhood death, and maybe more,” he told the Houston Chronicle.
The Texas Department of Health and Human Services states on their site that vaccination is “the only way to prevent measles.” Measles rates in Texas dropped by 99.9 percent after the introduction of the vaccine to the state in 1958. The disease was all but eradicated until the early 2000s when anti-vaccination hysteria swept across the country based on a falsified study that claimed a link between the measles vaccine and autism.
Since then, vaccination rates in Texas have dropped precipitously. There have been three major outbreaks since 2013. In all cases, unvaccinated residents who traveled to parts of the world where measles is still an active threat returned to the state to spread it to unvaccinated communities. The current outbreak began in Gaines County, which is one of the least vaccinated counties in Texas.
Children should have two doses of the measles vaccination by age six. If not, they are at risk of contracting the disease, which is highly contagious and spreads rapidly. Texans who are unvaccinated should immediately make an appointment to get the shot, particularly in places where the outbreak is active, which now includes most major cities.
Measles is a deadly disease that still kills over 100,000 people a year even with widespread vaccination. Most fatal cases involve unvaccinated children, who are particularly susceptible to the disease. Widespread vaccination causes “herd immunity,” which prevents the disease from spreading and mutating.
According to Johns Hopkins University, the effectiveness of the measles vaccine has been part of the reason so many people now forego it.
“Strong immunization programs undermine themselves,” their site reads. “When vaccination rates are high, the disease goes away. As a result, people aren’t as concerned about it and don’t see the necessity to vaccinate.”
Worries about rare adverse reactions to vaccinations have fueled conspiracy theories against them, further reducing vaccination rates. Texas doctors are now pleading with residents to embrace vaccinations again before more children succumb to the measles outbreak.
