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Measles is Killing More People in the DRC Than Ebola-And Faster:
Since January 2019, officials have recorded over 100,000 measles cases in the DRC, mostly in children, and nearly 2,000 have died. The figures surpass those of the latest Ebola outbreak in the country, which has tallied not quite 2,500 cases and 1,665 deaths since August 2018. The totals were noted by World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a speech today, July 15, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.
"Frankly, I am embarrassed to talk only about Ebola," Dr. Tedros said (he goes by his first name). He gave the speech in response to two new developments in the Ebola outbreak. That is that two Ebola responders were murdered in their home in the DRC city of Beni, and that officials on Sunday had identified the first case of Ebola in Goma, a DRC city of over one million at the border with Rwanda.
"Both of these events encapsulate the challenges we continue to face on a daily basis in DRC," he said. Tedros was referring to the scattering of disease—including Ebola and measles—as violence hampers outbreak responses and access to medical care. Since January, officials have counted 198 attacks on health responders, which left seven dead and 58 healthcare works and patients injured.
[...] So far, the Ebola outbreak has largely stayed in DRC's North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which sit on the eastern side of the country and border South Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda. The measles outbreak, on the other hand, has spanned at least 23 of the country's 26 provinces. The health ministry declared an outbreak on June 10 and noted a 700% spike in the case count over the count in the first half of last year.
"And yet it gets little international attention," Dr. Tedro noted, adding that malaria also kills more than 50,000 people each year in the DRC.
Measles cases in developed countries are rarely fatal because of the availability of effective treatment at health care facilities. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases — just entering a room where an infected person passed through a few hours ago could lead to an infection because the disease exhibits airborne transmission. Further, people who have measles are contagious for 1-4 days before they exhibit any symptoms.
Should an outbreak take hold, it could overwhelm facilities' ability to treat all infected people. This is especially so if such an outbreak came during, say, flu season when hospitals are already under an increased load and fewer beds would be available for a concomitant measles outbreak.
And not just for your own health, either. Infants and the immune-compromized rely on herd immunity to keep them safe. As long as something like 93% of people have been vaccinated and have the vaccine "take", any instance of the disease would be hard-pressed to encounter another host to infect. At lower vaccination rates, there are enough susceptible people around that disease transmission becomes increasingly possible to the point that an epidemic could arise.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 16 2019, @08:37PM (8 children)
That is an IMPORTANT distinction. God and the devil are arguing about you, and you are given the choice of catching one of ten different diseases. First has 100% mortality rate, working down to measles, which only has a 2% mortality rate. My answer would be, "Everyone wants to go to heaven, but I don't want to go right now, Lord. I'll take those measles, please!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @09:05PM (4 children)
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or don't recognize the false equivalency.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 16 2019, @10:27PM (3 children)
Explain this "false equivalency" please. Disease A has a high mortality rate, disease B has a much lower mortality rate. Which would you rather have?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @10:35PM (2 children)
It's not an either-or. It can be "neither", you know. But apologies, you're right that it's not false equivalence. It's false dichotomy.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 16 2019, @11:00PM (1 child)
OK, neither. So, you are hypothesizing a world without disease? We're going to stamp out measles, malaria, ebola, AIDS, cancers, all of it? All within the next six months, or the next six generations? Sorry, ain't happening. We aren't even close to wiping out cancer.
You can make valid arguments that measles should be pretty much eliminated by now. If there were a world-wide drive against it, like there has been against polio, maybe it would be as rare as polio is today. But, humans are human, and they mostly refuse to cooperate on a world wide basis, so we are where we are today.
If you are going to fear disease (I think we all do, some more, some less) then you might reserve your energies for those disease that are most lethal. Hemorhaggic fevers are real bitches. All of them seem to have fatality rates well over 50%. Measles? Sorry, I just can't get on board with doomsday visions of measles killing off the human race.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17 2019, @05:47PM
It can be both, too. All I'm saying is you're trying to make black and white choices in a place where they don't apply.
Mealses and Ebola have vaccines. There is a vaccine for the strains of HPV which are linked to certain cancers. AIDS has had ones in trial, not sure where they're at with that, but it isn't in general use (although PrEP and PEP are). Malaria and other cancers do not have vaccines.
Measles WAS eliminated in the United States, in 2000. There were no continuous transmissions of the disease for 12 months and the vaccination rate seemed enough for herd immunity for the cases still occurring overseas. We can thank ourselves, in part, for the current outbreak. Maybe we can get back to a point of elimination again.
Polio, in case you hadn't noticed, is now only natively occurring in three countries. World-wide cooperation has been proven to work in this regard. We might well live to see the disease completely wiped out in our lifetimes.
Here's the acid test for whether to promote vaccination: Is the rate of severe and serious complications from the disease greater or less than the rate of serious and severe complications from the vaccination? The economics of vaccine cost is important (it's one reason Polio still isn't quite there yet - oral vaccine is still cheaper than inactivated injection). However, the economics of vaccinations change when new decisions are undertaken to expand coverage. But it doesn't take "killing off the human race" to be concerned about a disease that is preventable. And the 110,000 that died in 2017 [google.com] from measles didn't deserve that, and could have been part of the 21.1 million who haven't died from the disease because vaccination (same source).
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @09:09PM (2 children)
Haha. I always find it interesting how many so-called "believer" are scared to death of dying, while so many non-believers actually welcome it when the symptoms of an incurable illness (or its treatments, like chemo) become too much to bear.
For a bunch of people convinced they're part of their invisible-friend's privileged group and are going to heaven, they sure are desperate to avoid it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 16 2019, @10:36PM (1 child)
Yeah. Haven't met a lot of dying people, have you.... It's pretty scary no matter your faith beliefs.
But you're more than welcome to die, we won't miss you.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday July 17 2019, @08:52AM
It's usually the religious nutjobs who are most against assisted suicide, and suicide in general.
(in the U.S. those same jobs are all up for killing people though, through war and the death penalty, despite "Thou shall not kill")