Clark County has a long history of the impact of measles



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Mission accomplished, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were declared in 2000. Measles has been successfully eliminated in the United States.

The center acknowledged the success of "a very effective vaccination program in the United States, as well as a better measles control in the Americas," according to the CDC website.

But the victory, as the people of southwestern Washington know, was short-lived.

At last count, the ongoing measles epidemic in Clark County affects up to 43 confirmed cases. Of these cases, 37 were unvaccinated patients – for the other five, their vaccination records can not be verified one way or another, and one patient only received one. 39, a single dose of MMR vaccine, according to Clark County Public Health.

Vaccines are a powerful weapon against this extremely contagious disease. But the growing suspicion of vaccines has eliminated vaccination rates, to the point that the World Health Organization has clbadified vaccine hesitancy as one of the top 10 global health threats in 2019.

Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County Health Officer and Public Health Administrator, told The Columbian that the exemption rates had begun to rise in part because of our short-term collective memory on the subject. The significance of these diseases: "Through immunization, we do not see these diseases much," said Melnick. "They do not remember the lung of steel for people with polio."

To combat this effect, it is useful to look at the long-term impact of measles and other infectious diseases.

Clark County has a rich and well-documented history in this regard. According to some accounts, the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Vancouver is responsible for transporting measles from New York to the west coast.

Ye olden measles

In "Early Medicine in the Pacific Northwest," Vancouver resident John C. Brougher, MD, described in detail the history of common ailments that affected early European explorers on the west coast.

Measles was large in the late 1700s and in the 19th century. The same was true of malaria, tuberculosis, smallpox, enteritis, gonorrhea, and syphilis. The treatments were rudimentary.

Brougher detailed the medical toolkit worn by Lewis and Clark in the first ground expedition to the Pacific Northwest in 1804.

"The list of medical supplies obtained for this expedition included drugs such as cream of tartar, powders of jalap, rhubarb and ipeca, camphor gum, asafoetida gum, calomel and several ointments" wrote Brougher in his anthology.

"For surgery, these men took several pocket instruments, a set of toothed instruments, three lancets to bleed and a tourniquet."

The Vancouver facility is partly responsible for the 1847 measles epidemic that decimated the Cayuse tribe and sparked the Whitman mbadacre. The 1994 publication of Dr. Robert T. Boyd, an anthropologist at Portland State University, demonstrated that travelers traveling by land from Fort Nez Percé in southeastern Washington to Fort Vancouver were carriers of the disease.

Dr. Forbes Barclay, a physician from Fort Vancouver, wrote in the 1840s that "it was known that measles was prevalent in Colombia in 1812 – believed to have been worn by the York Bay Company Express Express of York Factory where it prevailed. at the same time. "(Boyd noted that Barclay may have accidentally reversed the date and intended to write 1821.)

At the time, measles was fatal for about 10% of people who contracted it, Boyd reported.

During the outbreak of 1847, 39 deaths were reported in Vancouver over a period of three months, including 11 in one week.

On June 7, 1888, the Clarke County Registry reported a particularly difficult season that effectively interrupted the school year: "a furious outbreak of measles. In a clbadroom, there were forty-four cases of measles out of a total of fifty-five students. The Episcopal School of St. Lukes was eventually reduced to two students and this school also closed. It is safe to say that at least 500 cases have been reported this spring. "

For almost a century, almost everyone in the United States contracted measles as a child – according to CDC estimates in the decade before the vaccine in 1963, between 3 and 4 million people in the country have measles every year. Of these, 400 to 500 people died, 48,000 were hospitalized and 1,000 suffered encephalitis or swelling of the brain.

Consider the surrealist advance in the article entitled "MEASLES INCREASED IN HAMMER", published in The Columbian on July 2, 1957, and badures readers that a ninefold increase in the number of measles cases should not give rise to any concern. .

"The total number of measles cases reported to the County Health Department this year is 288, nine times higher than the measles outbreaks reported in the county last year. There is no epidemic or cause for concern, Dr. Morris Chelsky, county health officer resident insured Monday. "

The health coverage of the Colombian population changed significantly in the early 1960s. Between 1953 and 1963, the newspaper published 20 articles on measles and polio epidemics. From 1963 to 1973, diseases were mentioned in only seven articles. Of these, four were reminders to take advantage of local vaccination events. The other three articles dealt with a measles epidemic in 1971 that affected 10 people.

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