Measles Parties Can Kill!
Measles parties are raising their ugly heads again due to lack of sensible advice. The reason they are being talked about is that many parents are nervous of the MMR and single measles vaccines, and are seeking other ways of giving their children immunity against measles. They believe that gaining immunity by giving their child the full blown disease is a safer way to achieve this than by vaccination.
The reasoning behind this is uncertain, though it is doubtful that parents would knowingly put their children at risk by giving them immunity against a killer disease through deliberately letting them be infected by that same killer disease.
The purpose of immunity is to ensure that a person will not contract a disease, especially at a time when the disease could be especially harmful. Fatality due to measles is highest in children, so where is the logic in parents ensuring that their children catch it?
In the 1940s and 1950s mumps and German measles parties were common when anyone in the street had either of these diseases. There were, and still are, specific reasons for these two diseases being chosen by parents as ones their children must have before adulthood.
Mumps and German measles are not serious in children, unless their immune system is impaired by, for example, AIDS or HIV viruses, certain cancer treatments or steroidal treatments for asthma. However, if caught as an adult, mumps can cause infertility in men and also affects the ovaries of women, which is not so well known. Infertility is relatively rare, but it can occur, and in any case is very painful after puberty.
German measles (rubella) cause defects in the developing fetus, and if the mother catches this disease within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, the child has up to a 90% chance of being born with a defect. This reduces to 20% if between weeks 10-16. After 16-20 weeks it is rare for the fetus to be affected.
There are many types of defect which can occur, including sight and hearing defects, heart defects and mental retardation.
It makes sense, therefore, to ensure that these two diseases are contracted as children, not adults. Perhaps parents are confusing German measles parties with normal measles. The two are not related. The term 'German' has no connection with the country. It likely comes from the Latin germanus meaning similar, and the two diseases do have many symptoms in common, though are caused by different viruses and have very different outcomes, depending on the age of the sufferer.
German measles is much more serious in post pubescent females, especially when newly pregnant, while measles is much more dangerous in young children where 80% of deaths caused by this respiratory infection are ultimately from the associated pneumonia. Many survivors suffer from complications such as partial or full deafness, sight defects, meningitis and encephalitis. On the other hand, measles is less dangerous in a healthy adult.
From 1999 to 2004, the global annual death rate due to measles dropped from 871,000 to 454,000 mainly due to vaccination, so measles is still a killer. The vast majority of deaths have been in children, around 25% under 12 months old. This year has seen the first measles deaths in the UK for 14 years. Deaths will increase if parents insist on sending their kids to measles parties as a way of avoiding the vaccine.
If a parent wants a child to receive immunity to measles, it would be far safer to achieve it by means of a vaccination than the full blown disease. The vaccination gives the child a mild dose of the infection to enable the body's immune system to create antibodies against the measles virus.
That parents refuse to accept this, and so put their children at risk, may be for two reasons: a misconception that measles is as innocuous to children as German measles, and a belief that the MMR, or the single measles vaccine, will do their child more harm than the disease itself. Perhaps they are unaware that the vaccine is a diluted form of the real live vaccine, and that any side effect must therefore be less serious than from the real disease.
Naturally, any live vaccine can cause side effects. However, the instances of these are well below those of the full disease which is a known killer. This is why the vaccine was developed in the first place. Studies have indicated that there have been no known deaths through the MMR vaccine. Had this not been the case the 500 million doses so far given world-wide, the associated death rate would have been expected to compare with a death rate of up to 200,000 from a similar number of measles cases.
Comparisons of other side effects show similar results. Young children with measles have a 1 in 250 chance of contracting meningitis while with MMR this is one in every million children vaccinated. Convulsions are one in 200 measles cases but one in a thousand MMR cases.
If the MMR child has a convulsion it is publicized throughout the media; not so for a normal measles case.
All of this indicates that governments and health authorities are doing a poor job of educating parents and explaining what these vaccines are. Today's parents are too young to have lived in the old days when children died from measles - hundreds every year in England alone.
From the content of letters which appear in the media, and discussions overheard, it is very obvious that there is a misconception of the real nature of the disease.
Those most at risk from measles are children under 5. Over 80% of the annual measles death rate of 454,000 are in this age group, about 25% under 12 months as previously stated, and 80% of these die from pneumonia. Measles is a respiratory disease. It is generally not fatal in adults unless very old and undernourished.
Where is the sense, then, in deliberately giving children a disease, in order to somehow make them immune to it as adults, at an age when the death rate from that disease is highest? They are much safer to catch it as an adult. There is no sense or logic and this indicates a total lack of education and understanding.
That is not the parents' fault. Authorities should do better and give these parents the information they need to make a considered decision.
It is their children's lives they are gambling with on scanty advice, and it is not their fault. They mean well, so help them.
Article Source: George Chapin, This article may be freely reproduced as long as this resource box is included: Article by: George Chapin, http://www.InternetMarketingWeek.com Get Your Free $97 Internet Marketing e-Course delivered to you.