Marlene Howie still remembers the fear and confusion she felt when her daughters Nicola and Cherie contracted the English measles.
Eldest daughter Nicola caught it at boarding school in the late 80s, and had to return home.
“She would have had at least two weeks, probably three weeks off school. She was really, really sick.”
Her youngest child Cherie, then aged six or seven, caught it from her sister and had to take at least a month off school.
“When she went back, she only went back for half days for a while, so she was really crook as well.”
The two girls had both had the standard vaccinations at the time.
“They both got the measles injections when everyone else did, at the normal time,” Howie, who lives in Motueka, recalls.
“The doctors at the time were really flummoxed, they couldn’t understand why these two girls had gotten so sick, because they had the full-blown English measles - the rash all over and the high temperatures and the whole works.”
However, Howie’s son didn’t get measles at the time.
Howie, now 74, recalls having the measles herself when her oldest daughter was a toddler. “But I didn’t get it as bad as the girls did. I mean, I was sick for a few days, but they were seriously ill.”
Forty years have passed since she had to watch her children suffer, but Howie says the memory of how dangerous measles can be has stayed with her.
“We don’t have any young ones around us [today],” she says.
“If we did have, I’d be checking to make sure they’d had their vaccinations because it’s so critical. It’s a very contagious disease and it’s a killer. And these diseases do kill.”
New Zealand is currently in the early stages of a measles outbreak, according to Health NZ, as the number of cases has risen to 17.
With cases recorded in Northland, Auckland, Taranaki, Manawatū and Wellington, several cases have been linked to a Bluebridge Cook Strait ferry sailing on October 3, which led to “several hundred” close contacts at Wellington high schools being identified.
According to Ministry of Health director of public health Corina Grey, some of the cases have been hospitalised.
The last measles outbreak in New Zealand took place in 2019, resulting in more than 2000 cases, 35% of whom required hospital care. It spread to Samoa from New Zealand, leading to an outbreak of more than 5000 cases and killing 83.
“We do always tend to forget until there’s another outbreak,” says Dr Prabani Wood, a GP at Waikato University Student Health based in Hamilton.
“Public health messaging is around vaccination rates, and our vaccination rate is about 82%, which is not enough, obviously, to stop the outbreak that is happening.”
Wood, who is also the medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of GPs, says she’s “lucky” to have come across measles cases just twice in her 16 years as a GP.
“Both cases were mild ... a couple of real textbook cases. Fortunately, those two children recovered quickly, and obviously we informed the public health unit at the time.”
But in some cases, measles can lead to someone becoming seriously sick.
“You only need to look at Samoa during the pandemic, when they had that outbreak. There were many, many children who ended up hospitalised there as a result of measles,” Wood says.
“In the short term, you can get pneumonia as a result of having a recent measles infection. And there’s a very rare but very serious instance where you get essentially swelling and inflammation around the brain after having measles. It can also cause deafness.
“The people who are particularly at risk are young children, those who are pregnant and people with already weakened immune systems [like] someone who’s on treatment for cancer.”
What are the symptoms of measles?
“A high fever, sometimes going up to 40C, a cough and then often - this can be quite specific to measles - sore red eyes, which you might not always get with other viral illnesses. And then there’s a rash that not everyone gets, but it’s a specific rash that usually starts on the face behind the ears and then spreads down onto the body,” explains Wood.
“They’re the sort of common symptoms that people get.”
Her advice to anyone experiencing symptoms is to isolate at home and if they worsen, call Healthline or your GP.
“They can link them to the public health units around the country who are trying to do contact tracing, so they’ll try to confirm whether this is a measles case or not.
“Stay home, try and rest up, but obviously be aware if you’re starting to get more unwell, to seek out medical care. The other messaging is to check your vaccination history and to get vaccinated. There are different age groups that might need a booster.”
The main message, Wood says, is to take measles seriously.
“For the majority, if it’s children that get it, it’s not pleasant, but it’s an infection that they get over quite quickly,” she says.
“But at least 10% of people that get measles end up with serious illness and serious follow-on side effects from it, which [lead to] sometimes long-term hospitalisation and even death. I think people forget that.”
Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who has been with the NZ Herald since 2019. She specialises in all things health and wellbeing and is passionate about telling Kiwis’ real-life stories.