Emergency physician Dr. Bri Budlovsky, pregnant with her second child, says it’s scary to know someone with measles could walk through the doors of Victoria General or Royal Jubilee at any time.
“My daughter is at the age where she’s only had one MMR vaccine so she’s fairly immune, but doesn’t have the full immunity and I’m pregnant and I work on the front lines,” said Budlovsky, 32.
“We have kids come in with fever and rashes all the time and how long is it going to be until one of those is a measles case and we are all exposed?” she asked.
Nine cases of confirmed measles have been reported in Vancouver this year, contracted outside North America.
“It’s terrifying and sad because it is entirely preventable,” said Dr. Eric Cadesky, president of the Doctors of B.C., which represents 14,000 physicians.
B.C. Children’s Hospital was notified last week that one of the individuals with a confirmed case of measles visited the emergency department while they were infectious. “I know a number of young people are under investigation [for measles] so I expect that number will go up,” said Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer.
Washington state has declared a state of emergency due to an measles outbreak unfolding there.
Island Health said no cases have been reported on Vancouver Island.
“Measles is probably the most infectious virus that we know,” said Henry. The last outbreak in B.C. was in the Fraser Valley in 2014.
Measles is preventable with an MMR — measles, mumps, rubella — vaccine given in two doses.
Cadesky said on Saturday 10 patients came to his practice for the MMR vaccine; five were minors. That may be a bright side to this sad story, he said. “It’s a shame that for certain people that they have to see others sick or dying in order to reassess the assumptions that they have made,” Cadesky said.
Budlovsky said the outbreak is frustrating: “That something so entirely preventable and so contagious with such a high rate of complications is coming back because of a minority of people who have misinformation.”
She supports a Maple Ridge mother’s petition to B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix to make measles vaccination mandatory for school-age children. On Monday the petition had more than 27,000 signatures.
Henry said she understands the sentiment, but would rather see reporting of immunization status at school entry as an opportunity to provide education on vaccine safety to parents and collect data on which communities and schools are at risk. “I think the simplest way to do it,” said Henry, “is we could enact legislation that makes [reporting] a requirement at school entry.”
Henry has talked to B.C.’s health minister about this since the outbreak. “We are going to have more conversations for sure.”
In California, children can’t attend publicly funded schools unless they are vaccinated, said Cadesky. “The debate has always been whether educating people and allowing them to make the choice is the best way or whether something more coercive will be better for the public good.
“Our resources are already stretched and we’re having to spend more of our resources to educate people about facts that we have known for a long time, but which are being disputed,” he said.
Measles is a highly contagious viral infection that spreads through the air by coughing and sneezing. It can live for several hours in the environment. It starts out like a flu and develops into a rash. People are contagious for about five days before symptoms.
“It’s one of the most contagious illnesses that we vaccinate against,” said Budlovsky.
A 1998 research paper that linked the vaccine to autism was retracted in 2010 as utterly false but by then had spawned an anti-vaccine and vaccine-hesitant generation.
“I can say with complete certainty this vaccine does not cause autism,” said Henry. “But it’s frightening for parents and it’s difficult to unfrighten people, so we need opportunities to discuss with parents the importance of immunization and the truth about the vaccines themselves.”
