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posted by takyon on Saturday July 04 2015, @11:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the jenny-mckillthy dept.

Health officials on Thursday confirmed the country's first measles death since 2003, and they believe the victim was most likely exposed to the virus in a health facility in Washington state during an outbreak there. The woman died in the spring; a later autopsy confirmed that she had an undetected measles infection, the Washington State Department of Health said in a statement. The official cause of death was announced as "pneumonia due to measles."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 178 people from 24 states and the District were reported to have measles from Jan. 1 through June 26 of this year. Two-thirds of the cases, the CDC noted, were "part of a large multi-state outbreak linked to an amusement park in California."

Measles were effectively eliminated in the United States in 2000, according to the CDC. Health officials have said that the disease made a comeback recently, in part because of a growing number of adults deciding to delay or abstain from vaccinating their children. Last year brought the highest number of recorded measles cases since 2000, according to the CDC. Earlier this year, President Obama acknowledged the concerns some have about effects of vaccines but said: "The science is pretty indisputable." "You should get your kids vaccinated — it's good for them," Obama said. "We should be able to get back to the point where measles effectively is not existing in this country."

takyon: Celebrity critics recently denounced California's new mandatory vaccine law.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by kadal on Sunday July 05 2015, @03:03PM

    by kadal (4731) on Sunday July 05 2015, @03:03PM (#205294)

    The vaccines aren't 100% effective. You can try to vaccinate your kids but there's a small change that the vaccine doesn't work for them. In that case, those kids are dependent on herd immunity to prevent them from getting exposed.

    There are also kids with other diseases that have to take medication that suppresses their immune system.

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