Last year, cases of measles—a serious, vaccine-preventable disease that's highly contagious—jumped by 79% around the world. Most of them were in children. That trend is continuing this year, threatening to reverse an impressive 73% drop in measles deaths worldwide from 2000 to 2018.
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00:00 No.
00:01 Good boy.
00:02 Let's play.
00:03 The day the rash started on his torso
00:08 and spread throughout his whole body
00:10 and that's when we knew something was wrong
00:13 and it was more than a cough and a cold.
00:15 So we took him to A&E.
00:16 He stayed there for six days
00:19 while he contracted COVID and pneumonia.
00:21 It was quite traumatic.
00:23 They had been together and no one was,
00:25 didn't pick anything up.
00:26 And it is a simple vaccination to get.
00:30 If you are protected,
00:33 there are folks that can't be protected
00:35 and you actually help them out by being vaccinated.
00:37 So, you know, very young children
00:39 that aren't eligible yet are protected
00:41 because their siblings and parents and grandparents
00:45 and neighbors are protected.
00:46 These disruptions in healthcare
00:50 and the sort of disruptions of vaccination services
00:53 within that healthcare system
00:55 have really sort of, really set us up for,
00:59 you know, high, high risk and more and more cases.
01:04 We know that the 86% was not good enough globally
01:07 to prevent large outbreaks in sort of '18 and '19.
01:12 And 83% is not going to be enough
01:14 to actually stop large outbreaks this year or next year.
01:18 And so we need to do extra.
01:20 From my point of view as a clinician
01:22 and also as a public health person,
01:24 like, if you've missed a dose, you should get the dose.
01:26 And so it could be, you could be 20 years old
01:29 or 30 years old or six years old.
01:32 I think the point is that we really want to make sure
01:34 that we're protecting everyone.
01:37 (audience laughing)