I’m a Seattle doctor. Here’s what I need you to know about measles

Late last month,  a previously healthy child died from measles in Texas. This child was the first person to die of the disease in the United States in a decade. The following day, a child in Seattle was hospitalized with measles after traveling to numerous locations in the Seattle area, including the emergency department and his pediatrician’s office. Unfortunately, as measles is highly contagious, the child may have exposed hundreds of people to the disease at those locations.

The child who died in Texas was not like my second-born son, who was unlucky enough to be born with a severely compromised immune system. He also wasn’t like my most medically complex patients — children with congenital heart disease, brain tumors or who have undergone bone marrow or organ transplants.

The high-risk condition that made this child vulnerable to dying from measles was his lack of vaccination.

All decisions we make for ourselves and our families can have serious and sometimes deadly consequences for those around us. If you previously declined a measles vaccine for your child but the news of measles in our community is worrying you, it’s not too late. The measles vaccination, called MMR for measles-mumps-rubella, is the only effective way to prevent measles, and is both 97% effective and known to be very safe.

My son is alive today not only because of modern medicine and the dedication of his medical team but because people in my community vaccinate their children. Infants born with severely compromised immune systems cannot be vaccinated until their immune system is fully functional. It can take years after transplant or gene therapy for these children’s systems to be strong enough to respond to vaccines.

But every year, I care for more and more otherwise healthy children whose lack of vaccination puts them into this same high-risk category as these vulnerable children whose parents did not choose for them to have a chronic disease.

 Measles can cause encephalitis, brain inflammation that causes seizures and brain swelling. Measles can cause severe pneumonia, which may mean children need a tube to help support their breathing. Pregnant women infected with measles have an increased risk of miscarriage or stillbirth. Long-term side effects of measles include “immune amnesia,” which puts patients at increased risk of severe infections for months to years after measles was contracted. Measles can also cause blindness.

Unvaccinated children with measles have between a one-in-1,000 to a three-in-1,000 chance of dying from the disease. These risks are likely much higher for our most medically fragile patients. These complications only come from measles infections, and not from the MMR vaccine. The side effects of MMR are very rare. For example, MMR can cause febrile seizures in 1 in 3,000 children. That means your unvaccinated child is three times more likely to die from measles if infected than to have a febrile seizure from the MMR vaccine.

 Measles is no longer a disease of the past or a problem that only occurs in faraway places. Measles is here today. Measles is so contagious that nine in 10 unvaccinated people exposed will develop the disease. The infectious particles linger in the air and cause infections for two hours after the infected person has left the space. Because of this, it requires 95% of the community to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Herd immunity prevents mass transmission of measles and is what our immunocompromised patients rely on to stay healthy. In King County, only 87% of 2- to 4-year-olds have had an MMR vaccine and only 72% of kids ages 4 to 6 have received the two doses of the vaccine. These numbers put our community at risk of a measles outbreak. 

Parents, this is my plea to you, as the mother of a medically vulnerable child and a pediatric ER doctor who has spent my career caring for medically fragile children: Think about one person in your life who could become severely ill if infected with measles. Maybe it’s your friend’s 1-year-old who was born 10 weeks premature and has underdeveloped lungs, or your child’s classmate who is undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia or it’s your unvaccinated 2-year-old.

 If you chose not to vaccinate your child or if you are on the fence about it, schedule a visit to talk to your primary care physician about vaccines. We really, really want to talk to you.