NEEPS

pete_inthehills · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 7:59 am Post subject:

what's the problem with measles?

My siblings gave me measles when I was only 6 months old and it never bothered me.

Or is modern measles more viralent that in the old days.

pete
inthehills
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baldowrie · Neepster Joined: 21 Jul 2007 Posts: 1159

It's not the cute little childhood illness is portrayed as. An old neighbour of mine was left totally deaf by it, but he didn't die as he was expected to!

Complications with measles are relatively common, ranging from relatively mild and less serious diarrhea, to pneumonia and encephalitis (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis), corneal ulceration leading to corneal scarring. Complications are usually more severe amongst adults who catch the virus.

The fatality rate from measles for otherwise healthy people in developed countries is 3 deaths per thousand cases.[4] In underdeveloped nations with high rates of malnutrition and poor healthcare, fatality rates have been as high as 28%. In immunocompromised patients, the fatality rate is approximately 30 percent.

lachlanandmarcus · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 9:15 am Post subject:

A friend at university was virtually wheelchair bound by the measles he caught as a small child. Most people throw the illness off but it can be devastating.
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Martin · Neepster Joined: 16 Sep 2007 Posts: 663

It can be devastating, but being of the generation that took you round to a measles infected friend's for tea to make sure you "got measles over with", I think they do protest too much - the only childhood disease that I suffered badly from was chicken pox which I didn't get until my 30's - kids, if in general good health can in almost all cases shrug all the common childhood diseases off - measles, mumps, german measles, chicken pox etc.
Having survived the polio epidemics unvaccinated, a measle does not appear a great threat........
(father considered the polio vaccine dangerous, and refused to let me be vaccinated, for which I shall be forever grateful - several friends got the disease from the crude vaccine and were crippled for life....)
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baldowrie · Neepster Joined: 21 Jul 2007 Posts: 1159

My neighbour was of the 'generation that got measles' he was fit and healthy and his brother and sister had no complications. I think rather than 'they protest too much' there was no choice in those years and you tried to ensure your child caught at a stage in their lives that they had more of a chance to recover with no complications, which didn't always work out and of course the complications were not talked about or made widely known.

The added complication is for those adults and teenagers who for some reason were immune to it as a child and are at risk in their adult years. Then all these so called childhood diseases become extremely dangerous. My brother was one. He got Chicken pox aged 20 and was within days of being hospitalised, we got him to an emergency doctor in time to prevent pneumonia. He also got measles and was immediately put onto antibiotics and a daily nurse came to check on him. Another friend of mine caught chicken pox, again didn't catch it as a child despite his brother and sister having it He was hospitalised within 2 days of the spots coming out and on life support for a week in the high depenancy unit. It was touch and go for the first 48 hours. He was and is fit, healthy. As a farmer he worked out side and is always on the go.

Vaccines are use as the herd prevention and not just for the single prevention. Vacinnating children, when it is appropriate to do so, prevent complications the majoirty of the time in themsleves and for the more vunerable in the wider community.

I had meseals, mumps, rubbella, chicken pox. But I was one of the luckier ones and had not comlications despite suffering for 10 weeks with chickenpox followed imediately by mumps. But that's not the case for every one.

The attitude of 'oh they will get over it' is not as high as it was because we are more informed that not everyone does and we need to watch for complications.

Just to add there is reason why these 'childhood diseases' are reportable to your GP and so on. And don't forget up until not so many years ago flu killed in it's thousands. It's still a killer but we have the knowledge and drugs to help prevent death, including vaccination in the susceptible.

Ina · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 10:51 am Post subject:

Yeah, I think folk just don't have the stamina to deal with it anymore the way we did when we were young... I never heard of any case with complications back then - we just all got it.
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Esther.R · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 12:11 pm Post subject:

My mum qualified as a physio in the early 60s, she remembers the awful experience of working with wards full of kids with measles encephalitis (sp?) who all either died or were left brain damaged. Terrifying disease when it does go badly.

monkey nuts · Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2009 12:14 pm Post subject:

I caught measles from my sister when I was about about 4 or 5. We both had pneumonia because of it. It has left us both prone to chest infections (my sisyer more so as she is a smoker) but otherwise we had no other problems.
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baldowrie · Neepster Joined: 21 Jul 2007 Posts: 1159

As I said earlier, the complications were not widely broadcast