RT Book, Section
A1 Boulton, Matthew L.
A1 Wagner, Abram L.
A2 Boulton, Matthew L.
A2 Wallace, Robert B.
SR Print(0)
ID 1182675574
T1 Measles
T2 Maxcy-Rosenau-Last Public Health & Preventive Medicine, 16e
YR 2022
FD 2022
PB McGraw Hill
PP New York, NY
SN 9781259644511
LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1182675574
RD 2024/04/19
AB Measles  is  considered  perhaps  the  most  infectious  disease  known  to  humans,  possibly  equaled  only  by  pertussis  in  its  communicability.1,2  Measles  was  described  and  differentiated  from  smallpox  by  the  Persian  physician  Al-Razi  in  the  tenth  century,3  but  was  not  recognized  as  a  viral  disease  until  1911,  with  the  virus  first  successfully  cultured  in  tissue  in  the  late  1930s.4  In  the  prevaccine  era,  virtually  every  child  became  infected  with  measles.  With  increasing  development  and  availability  of  vaccines  in  the  1960s,  the  incidence  of  disease  decreased  dramatically.5  Measles-containing  vaccines  were  among  the  very  first  vaccines  to  be  incorporated  into  the  World  Health  Organization’s  (WHO)  Expanded  Program  on  Immunization  (EPI)—those  recommended  vaccines  that  every  country  should  publicly  promote  and  fund.6  The  United  States  was  able  to  achieve  measles  elimination  (i.e.,  complete  control  of  any  endemic  chain  of  transmission  to  <  12  months),  in  1997.7  Today,  all  regions  of  the  WHO  have  established  target  dates  for  measles  elimination.8,9  However,  recent  years  have  seen  striking  increases  in  the  number  of  measles  cases,  even  in  countries  with  historically  robust  immunization  programs.10  Measles  remains  a  sentinel  disease  whose  emergence  within  a  country  may  represent  a  failure  of  the  government  to  provide  timely  vaccinations  to  all  residents  or  an  increase  in  vaccine  hesitancy,  a  growing  concern  following  the  now-discredited  study  reporting  a  link  between  measles  vaccination  and  autism.