By Pepper Parr
BURLINGTON, ON. August 3, 2013. Burlington has reported an abnormal number of measles cases this year – six so far when the number has not been higher than two for the past eight years and often there were no cases reported.
Measles just isn’t a communicable disease we see very much of in Canada and that is because most of the population is immunized.
There was a time when many communities saw notices like this posted.
Dr. Monir Taha, the deputy Medical Officer of Health for the Region, talked earlier in the week about how the six cases of measles broke out in Burlington. The first was traced to a family with three children who were in British Columbia passing through the Vancouver airport. Someone with measles passed closed to these children, who had not been immunized and they picked up the communicable disease. How does Dr. Taha know that? Turns out there was a case of measles reported in British Columbia and that person was also in the Vancouver airport at the same time. Good medical detective work arrived at the conclusion that the Burlington residents picked up their measles at the same airport.
When those children got back to Burlington they passed what they had picked on along to other people who had not been immunized. The Regional Health people tracked where these children had been and published that information which advised the public that if they had rashes and had been in any of the location mentioned on the dates indicated – get to a doctor.
Getting this kind of information out to the public is what electronic media are in place for. News can get published instantly and read whenever people decide they want to know what’s going on.
We live in a world where people travel. There are tens of thousands of people in other countries who travel and are not immunized and can be communicable disease carriers.
Halton has a very good student immunization rate – 93% of students are immunized.
The trick is to ensure that your immunizations are up to date.
Halton has an exceptionally high immunization rate. 93% of the student population is immunized. The Region only has records of the student population.
Of the remaining 7% the Region has no data on 1%; 4% are not immunized for various reasons, religious or otherwise; 2% are opposed to immunization.
There are some fears out there about immunization explains Dr. Taha who said “it is the safest way to prevent communicable diseases and it works.” There are some that believe there is a link between immunization and autism – Dr. Taha thinks the medical community has shown all too clearly that there is no link. The one doctor who put forward that theory has lost his license to practice and the journal that published the paper has withdrawn it.
Immunization for measles is best done at the age of 1 for the first dose and then at about the age of four for the second dose.
Taha explains that the demographic that are at some risk are those born in the ‘70’s – when immunization was not as thorough as it is today. Some of that demographic explains Taha may not have gotten that second needle. If you get both doses – you’re covered for life.
Measles spreads easily – and there have been recent occasions when it got close to pandemic proportions. In Europe in 2011 there were 26,000 cases with 14,000 of those in France. Within the same time frame there were 700 cases of measles in Quebec.
The six cases found in Halton are described as a cluster which suggests there is no underlying problem but each Region has a Medical Officer of Health (MOH), each province has a Medical Officer of Health who supervises the Regions who are in place to oversee public health and to communicate with each other when there is as much as a suspicion of a problem.
Nationally there are several organizations that coordinate what goes on with each province. The MOH has a lot of authority. They have the power to quarantine an individual home, a whole street or a community if necessary.
Hers of cattle have had to be slaughtered because they had foot and mouth disease.
When we were experiencing SARS in 2003 some hospitals were closed to the general public. In the 50’s some ranches in western Canada had to destroy thousands of head of cattle due to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
Public health is serious business – in Halton we had people who were able to quite quickly trace the development of measles and assure the public that we did not have an epidemic happening. Government at its best.
