The current measles outbreak in Texas’ rural Gaines County claimed its first victim last month, a striking event in times of widespread vaccine access. The victim was an unvaccinated school child that was hospitalized due to an acute case of measles. Eighteen others have been hospitalized, given oxygen and intubated as the number of reported cases has risen into the hundreds – with the largest concentration growing in Western Texas and bordering areas. Most cases appear to be in unvaccinated children.
A second death occurred just weeks later in Gaines County’s neighboring Lea County, New Mexico. The victim was an unvaccinated adult that tested positive for the disease. Experts presume that the cause of death was likely measles. Cases have not only been reported in Western Texas – Maryland confirmed that a resident of Howard County recently traveled internationally through Washington Dulles International Airport, and had tested positive for measles. As a result, measles may even be spreading via this major American airport at this very moment.
Measles is a highly airborne virus, and often prominent in children. Symptoms of it include a high fever, a runny nose, watery eyes, a recurring cough and rashes. Though it is highly contagious, measles was officially declared eradicated in the United States in 2000, meaning that there had been no ongoing transmission of it in over twelve months. This is likely due to the introduction of the Edmonston-Enders measles vaccine in 1968.
This vaccine is now generally combined with the mumps and rubella vaccines, forming the commonly-known Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine. The only spike in measles cases since 2000 occured in 2015, with an estimated 125 cases that originated in California’s popular Disneyland theme park. That event was the largest outbreak of the measles America had seen in decades.
In reaction to the current outbreak, United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. published an opinion editorial in Fox News, strongly urging the people of Western Texas to take action through vaccination and other methods.
Vaccines, he says, “not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons.”
Despite his public call for vaccination, Kennedy’s editorial focuses on the prevention of malnourishment in children as well as the administration of vitamin A and cod liver oil. He believes that vitamin A is almost a “miracle cure” for being able to suppress the symptoms of the infection. While he does believe that most children across history were infected with measles due to a lack of vaccines, vitamin A deficiency was also an important factor.
“Almost all of them were malnourished children,” Kennedy said. “Measles still is a very, very lethal disease in foreign countries and developed countries where there is low malnutrition. The best thing Americans can do is to keep themselves healthy..”
However, some healthcare professionals find themselves disagreeing with Kennedy’s belief that malnourishment is the main cause of this recent measles outbreak. Phil Huang, director of health and human services in Dallas Country, Texas, felt that the importance of vaccination was diluted in Kennedy’s message. According to The Hill, the CEO of the biotechnology company Centivax, Dr. Jacob Glanville, agreed with this statement and believed that a lack of vaccination had notably more to do with the infection than malnourishment.
“While better nutrition is important for American children, it’s unlikely to make a difference when it comes to measles infection or severity — 90 percent of well-fed but unvaccinated American children exposed to measles will become infected, around 20 percent of those children will be hospitalized, and 0.1-1 percent of those children will die.,” Glanivlles said in an interview with The Hill.
Brett Giroir, an American Pediatrician and former Assistant Secretary for Health, advised against the use of vitamin over prevention with vaccine – stating, “Please do not rely on #VitaminA to save your child in the US – helps in Africa where there is deficiency-not here. I have both treated and buried children with measles,” in a post on the social media platform X.
In a modern era of widespread vaccination, it is crucial to vaccinate against diseases such as measles in order to protect every citizen. As medical professionals debate the cause and the number of cases rises, vigilant prevention remains incredibly paramount in order to suppress the disease.
