The war to end measles

Whenever you bring together children – or teenagers or young adults – some of the most contagious childhood diseases can take advantage of those that are susceptible. This was the case during the First World War, where life in barracks and troop transport contributed to the virulent spread of the 1918 flu, which, unlike most strains of flu, was more killer for young people in good health than for the elderly.

Many colleges require a specific list of immunizations before students enter dormitories, including a meningococcal vaccine to prevent bacterial meningitis. But the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine is still at the top of the list. It is because measles is so contagious that if the immunity of the herd – when a high percentage of the population is protected by vaccination – by a few percentage points, the measles virus can take full advantage of it.

"The first things you see, the weaknesses of your public health system," said Dr. Ratner, will be infections like this, "measles, infectious by the respiratory route and making it easy to pass people sensitive to people sensitive. "

When my own daughter went to college, a person carefully examined his vaccination record, always accepted questions without question at his school, and discovered that his very first MMR had been given out a few months before his first birthday and that he had not been asked. he did not count. ; she had to go take another dose before settling in her dormitory.

I had asked that the vaccine be too early because we were going to take it to a country where the risk of exposure to measles was still present (so far, not in Brooklyn). You can administer the MMR vaccine as early as 6 months if a child is exposed to an increased risk of exposure to measles, and this provides some protection, but you need to repeat the shot after the child has reached the Age of 1 year. I had forgotten to do it, and no one had ever noticed. As the pediatrician's mother of the child with the incomplete vaccination record, I was a little embarrassed, but mostly impressed.

Dr. Stimson went on to point out that soldiers of the First World War who grew up in more isolated, usually rural, conditions were less likely to be immune to childhood diseases and that "when thousands of these young rural men are massed together for the first time. In military camps, contagious diseases are likely to be very common, "he said. This was also noted during the American Civil War, when measles was a particularly devastating disease and off-farm recruits were particularly vulnerable.

The young men of 1918 were exposed to a terrible danger (Dr. Stimson himself had been wounded in combat in Flanders, serving in British troops), but they were also in danger because they were exposed to viruses and bacteria the other.