Keeping measles under control
MILWAUKEE _ Mary Rotar was getting ready to head home for the weekend, when the call came late that Friday afternoon.
The 23-month-old girl with the rash and fever does have measles, the state health lab technician said.
“My heart just sank,” said Rotar, infection control officer at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa.
A measles outbreak, rare as it is these days, can be devastating. It’s highly contagious; someone sneezing across the room can pass it along, and the germs linger for as long as two hours.
Nearly everyone over 50 remembers having measles _ the fever, the red blotches and the sting caused by even a slight beam of sunlight. In its heyday in 1958, measles affected more than 800,000 across the country.
But a vaccine developed in 1963 worked wonders. By 2000, the disease had been declared eradicated in the United States.
There are occasional outbreaks, though. The last big one in Wisconsin, in 1989-’90, infected more than 1,100 people in Milwaukee and killed six children across the state _ four babies, a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old.
Rotar knew they would have to move fast if they were going to contain this one.
But how much exposure had there been?
The little girl had been admitted to Children’s Hospital the previous Monday. She was moved into isolation on Thursday when the doctors suspected measles. But in those three days in between, she potentially had been in contact with as many as 30 of the sickest, most vulnerable children _ transplant and cancer patients, kids with almost no ability to fight off infection.
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