“Measles is one of our most infectious diseases, and so, in an unvaccinated population, one person can potentially make 12 to 18 other people sick,” Howe told Chelsea Daniels on The Front Page podcast last week.
Organisations around the country are gearing up to fight the outbreak, such as Plunket offering vaccinations to families with babies, and Health Minister Simeon Brown considering rolling out the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) zero vaccination to infants between 4 months and 12 months old.
To prevent measles from spreading, 95% of all New Zealanders would need immunity.
We currently have around 82% population immunity, but Howe says rates vary wildly between regions: Northland and Lakes are around 62% and 73%, while the Hutt Valley, Capital & Coast, and Canterbury have 90% coverage.
Measles is the third most common vaccine-preventable cause of death among children worldwide, according to the national Immunisation Advisory Centre.
For people who were born before the 1970s, measles was a common rite of passage. Most people caught it in childhood and lived to tell the tale.
But many of those who lived through it will also remember the horror stories of the ones who didn’t make it - and the ones who suffered serious long-term health impacts.
One famous death was that of Olivia Dahl, the 7-year-old daughter of children’s author Roald Dahl, who died of measles encephalitis in 1962.
“It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness,” Dahl wrote two decades after her death. “Believe me, it is. In my opinion, parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk.”
According to Health NZ, between one and three of every 1000 reported measles cases in the United States results in death, most commonly from pneumonia. It is more severe in malnourished children, pregnant people and those who are immunocompromised.
“Measles is also serious in healthy children: over half of all the children who died from measles in the UK between 1970 and 1983 were previously healthy,” Health NZ says.
Measles also causes “immune amnesia”, making you more vulnerable to catching other illnesses in the days and weeks after the infection, and it can wipe out existing antibody protection gained from previous illnesses or immunisations.
It’s a serious illness that can be prevented with the effective and safe MMR immunisation, which is between 90% and 95% effective in protecting against measles - and no, there is no reputable evidence that the jab causes autism.
Measles is a risky disease to catch, and most of us who catch it will recover.
But a considerable number won’t have that same luck, and it is those people who need our protection.
