Unvaccinated children will get sick in adolescence
The event, which Russian virologists considered unexpected and fatal, occurred in the capital. The second university after the Russian State University of Oil and Gas. Gubkin, where students were sent remote due to a measles outbreak, became MAI. Students, is this suitable? Scientists spoke about the situation with the incidence of measles among students studying in the main building on the Volokolamsk highway on Tuesday, they were transferred to distance education. Access to the main territory of the university is currently only possible for students who are immune to measles. But these measures are not enough, doctors say. Pandora’s box, alas, is not ajar, but wide open. A childhood disease is spreading among the students, and that’s not a good sign. When there is a gap in herd immunity, the vanquished diseases return.
In fact, measles was defeated in the 20th century – it was facilitated by mass vaccination. For several decades, no one even remembered her. And suddenly it broke out: there were outbreaks of infection in St. Petersburg, Dagestan, Kuzbass, Novosibirsk and, finally, in Moscow. The sanitary doctors, of course, acted according to the instructions: they isolated for three weeks all the people in contact with the sick. But the disease has not receded, it continues to spread.
“We are reaping the rewards of our carelessness of twenty years ago,” says infectious disease specialist Alena Solomina. “That’s when the anti-vaccination movement was just beginning. And today, these children whose parents have refused to be vaccinated are falling ill. Moreover, students constitute one of the most mobile groups of the population. They travel often, visit friends in epidemically deprived areas, catch the “infection” and pass it on to the public. Probably, everyone who travels to dangerous regions should then be distanced and quarantined. Only the chain reaction has already started, and it cannot be stopped.
According to virologist, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Felix Ershov, in ancient times, measles was most common in young children. This epidemic infection spared no one to such an extent that the number of people born and sick with measles was practically equal.
“Fever, lack of appetite and severe headache exhaust the patient,” says Ershov. – The percentage of serious complications from measles is particularly high. The most characteristic of them are pneumonia, encephalitis, meningitis, purulent inflammation of the middle ear, dementia, blindness, deafness.
During the pre-vaccination period in Russia, one thousand cases of measles per 100,000 people were recorded. In terms of the country’s total population, this amounted to approximately 2.5 million sick children, of whom approximately 10,000 died of measles each year. The viral nature of the disease was proven in 1911, the virus itself was not discovered until 1954, and an effective vaccine was created only half a century ago.
“Once we thought we could completely eradicate measles,” notes the virologist.
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