PORT ANGELES, WA (KIRO/CNN) – A young woman from the state of Washington has become the first person in the country to die from measles in a dozen years.
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“This should have been a preventable death, and I think her death is a tragedy”, said Dr. Mark Schleiss, professor of pediatrics and director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology at the University of Minnesota.
The state health department said the woman from Clallam County, in northwestern Washington, was most likely exposed to measles at a medical facility during a recent outbreak in the area.
Officials have not released whether or not the woman was vaccinated, but they did release that she had an immune system that was compromised due to medications that she was taking.
Moyer said that this year, it is the 11th case of measles in Washington and also the sixth in Clallam County.
According to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 178 people who caught measles from January 1 to June 26 in 24 USA states.
Measles, also called rubeola, is a highly contagious respiratory infection that’s caused by a virus.
“She was at that medical facility when one of our cases was present”. It has been reported that it is the first measles death in the USA since 2003 and the first in the state since 1990.
The officials said that the infected woman was hospitalised for various health conditions in an institution in Callam County. She was there at the same time as a person who later developed a rash and was contagious for measles, Moyer said. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost twice as many children died from measles as from polio.
“This tragic situation illustrates the importance of immunizing as many people as possible to provide a high level of community protection against measles”, the state health department said in a statement.
That measure, passed by the Legislature in the aftermath of a measles outbreak at Disneyland that was linked to low inoculation rates, makes California the third state to abolish religious and other personal exemptions to vaccinations.
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People with compromised immune systems often can not be vaccinated, and even if they are inoculated, such individuals may lack a strong immune response when exposed to infection, making them especially susceptible to outbreaks.
