Measles Outbreak Spreading Across US and Europe

The largest measles outbreak in fifteen years is slowly making its way across both the United States and Europe. Care2 reports that 214 children have contracted the disease in the United States this year, up from an average of about 50. Just this past summer, the CDC reported that fourteen confirmed cases were reported in the state of Indiana alone. Also, the Inquisitor, which gets its data from the World Health Organization, is reporting that Europe is experiencing up to three times as many cases as usual, with a total of 26,000 in all thus far this year, resulting in nine deaths.

Many people confuse measles and chicken pox, since both cause red bumps, the problem is that measles is far more deadly than chicken pox and thus, many people unaware of its dangers fail to take their child in for medical attention.

Both the CDC and WHO are suggesting that the not so sudden uptick in measles has been going on for the past several years, and that it's mostly due to parents failing to have their children immunized. Many people in Europe and the US have been intentionally not having their children get the vaccines that doctors recommend to ward off a plethora of diseases out of fear they will become autistic. Others believe that such diseases as measles have been eradicated, which is obviously not true. Still others yet seem to believe that if everyone else has their kids vaccinated, why should they have to do so seeing as how there will be no infected kids around theirs to infect them. While this last assumption might hold true if the vast majority of parents do get their kids vaccinated, it doesn't when that isn't the case, and more and more over recent years, many have opted out, with the resulting increase in not just new cases of measles, but in other easily prevented childhood diseases such as mumps and rubella.

Another more ominous reason for the increase is the twin factors of increased poverty and immigration. Europe has been virtually exploding with new immigrants and when that fact that is combined with the severe poverty seen in much of Eastern Europe, many of which don't have a government supported vaccination program and in many European cities where immigrants wind up living, it seems almost inevitable.

Health care officials the in the United States and most Europeans countries have been trying to get the word out about the rise in infectious diseases in the hope that more parents will come back to vaccinations and that more wealthy countries will help to set up vaccination programs in countries that can't yet afford them.