Thanks to widespread vaccination campaigns , NBC News reports , spheric wellness expert announced on Tuesday , September 27 that North , South , and Central America are now officially free of autochthonous measles cases .
morbilli — which can cause brain swelling , pneumonia , and , in extreme cases , death — was once responsible for about 2.6 million yearly dying worldwide . In 1963 , physiciansdeveloped a vaccinationfor the extremely communicable airborne virus , and in the eighties official launch a 22 - year campaign involving mass vaccination against measles , mumps and rubella throughout the Americas , the Pan American Health Organization ( P.A.H.O.)said in a assertion .
Today , measles is the 5th vaccine - preventable disease to be eliminated from the Americas , they add up , along with smallpox , acute anterior poliomyelitis , epidemic roseola , and innate rubella syndrome .
Malaria was eliminated from America in 2002 , and the westerly hemisphere ’s last case of endemic measles — meaning it was n’t because of an imported var. of the disease — was in 2002 . ( There have been document cases of non - endemic rubeola in the U.S. since then . More on that later . ) But even though it typically only takes a region three year to be declared costless of a disease , it took 14 old age this time around for official to certify the fact , The New York Timesreports . Experts ascribe the lag to a variety of broker , including a lack of communication between local and national health department ; unvaccinated migrator ; and state of war - torn regions that were n’t accessible for physicians .
Still , the P.A.H.O. warns , measles remains a global threat : In 2015 , 244,704 measles cases were report worldwide . To prevent import cases , it ’s significant to maintain high inoculation coverage rates in the Americas , they said .
In late 2014 and other 2015,125 peoplewere diagnose with rubeola . The initial eruption is think to have occur in California ’s Disneyland ; it then spread to multiple State Department , Mexico , and Canada . The disease tenor originated in the Philippines — but its rapid spread revealed that many kidsaren’t full vaccinated . A study laterrevealedthat around 9 million U.S. children are susceptible to rubeola , either because they have n’t received the shot or because they are n’t up to date with them .
[ h / tNBC News ]
Know of something you think we should cover ? Email us attips@mentalfloss.com .
