Our biggest in nearly two decades was in 2019, which saw 2,213 people contracting the disease and 35% of them hospitalised<\/a>. Another big year was 2011. More than 550 people caught measles, and my father was one of them.<\/p>\n At first he thought he just had the flu. He tried to sleep off the body aches in the work sick bay before going home, where he got sicker and sicker.\u00a0\u201cI woke up a few mornings later with a rash all over,\u201d he remembers. He went straight to the A&E where the doctor tested for measles. Diagnosis confirmed, he was asked to vacate the clinic immediately due to the contagious nature of the disease, advised to go home and \u201cstay home\u201d, drink plenty of fluids and keep a close eye on his temperature.<\/p>\n My dad was caught up in the large Auckland outbreak, which saw community transmission and 467 cases<\/a>. It was one of six measles outbreaks in the country that year, with \u201cthe highest number of outbreaks and cases reported for measles since reporting began in 2001\u201d (this was eclipsed in 2019).<\/p>\n \u201cI was surprised,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd feeling very sick.\u201d He thought he was immune, and assumed he\u2019d contracted the disease as a child, like many members of his generation who were born before immunisation. \u201cIn the USA where I was born there were no vaccinations, and the neighbourhood relied on children\u2019s parties to enforce immunity for the usual communicable diseases. Family history wrongly said that I had already had measles as a child,\u201d he explains, \u201cI obviously did not catch it way back then.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a similar situation at that time in New Zealand. People born prior to 1969, when the first measles vaccine arrived, are generally considered to be immune to the disease already, likely infected in childhood.<\/p>\n Measles is highly contagious. Non-immune people have a 90% chance of catching it<\/a> if they\u2019re in the same room as a case. Te Whatu Ora sent my father a letter instructing him to isolate for two weeks and avoid work and social engagements. \u201cI had no interactions with anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n At home, his condition began to deteriorate. \u201cI got worse, and my memory of an entire week is basically gone,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the worst period.\u201d His temperature hit 40 degrees. \u201cI became incoherent and totally debilitated. All I remember retrospectively are the strange dreams involving being on space ships and a dominant recurring dream of being in a large cave with a continuous sound of dripping water,\u201d he recalls. He was later told he\u2019d been wandering around different rooms, disorientated from fever. \u201cAfter a week my temperature dropped and I started becoming coherent again.\u201d<\/p>\n As sick as he was, he\u2019d been told not to go to the hospital if he could help it, due to risk of transmission, and isolated at home instead. His own GP was notified of the diagnosis by letter later. \u201cI saw him a week or so after it was all over,\u201d my father says. \u201cHe told me that I had it really bad.\u201d Some symptoms lingered. \u201cI had sore eyes for a long time afterwards.\u201d The body aches continued too, and there were nerve issues. Eventually, though, he came right. Not everyone does.\u00a0<\/p>\n Seven people died in 1991, and though our outbreaks are becoming less deadly<\/a>, studies show people who contract the disease have an increased risk of other unrelated infections<\/a>. Adults over the age of 20 are more likely<\/a> to suffer complications from the disease, as are children under five. Pregnant women are high risk \u2013 two unborn babies died in 2019 <\/a>\u2013 and anyone with weakened immune systems, like my dad.<\/p>\n \u201cContracting measles as a child, let alone an adult, is not something you would wish on anyone,\u201d he tells me. It was the sickest he\u2019s been in his entire adult life. \u201cI understand I was one of the oldest people in Auckland at the age of 57 to contract measles, although this was soon overtaken that same year by some older person.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not alone in reaching adulthood without acquiring immunity, though cases in people over 50 are rare (1% <\/a>of the 2019 outbreak). Te Whatu Ora cautions against relying on \u201cyour own or anyone else\u2019s memory<\/a>\u201d. Common symptoms \u2013 cough, fever, runny nose \u2013 are shared by other diseases, and have resulted in mistaken diagnoses in the past. You may think you\u2019ve had measles, but won\u2019t know for sure unless you have serology results or your immunisation records.<\/p>\n The combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine was introduced in 1990. Doses are given to babies at 12 months and 15 months under the National Immunisation Schedule \u2013 it\u2019s also free<\/a> for anyone under 18 \u2013 but our vaccination rates are at an \u201call-time record low<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Of the nation\u2019s two-year-olds, 82%<\/a> are fully immunised, a stat that drops to 80% <\/a>for New Zealanders born in the 1980s and 1990s.<\/p>\n A 1991<\/a> outbreak saw tens of thousands contract the disease. But after years of strong immunisation rates, New Zealand was declared free of endemic measles by the World Health\u00a0 Organisation<\/a> in 2017. Two years later 2,213 people <\/a>caught the disease. If our numbers aren\u2019t curbed by next year, WHO will likely withdraw our elimination status<\/a>.<\/p>\n Herd immunity requires 95% of the population <\/a>to be vaccinated, and our collective immunity is currently \u201ctoo low to prevent outbreaks from happening<\/a>\u201d, according to Te Whatu Ora. Without it, community outbreaks will continue. Modelling predicts this current outbreak could reach 150 cases a week, larger than the 100 <\/a>Health New Zealand says it can cope with, and it\u2019s urging people <\/a>to get immunised. Whether through complacency, ignorance or forgetting<\/a> what past epidemics were like, Dad doesn\u2019t think people take measles seriously enough. Experiencing it firsthand \u201creinforces my strong belief in widespread enforced immunisation for all communicable diseases\u201d and he\u2019s of the opinion that \u201cimmunisation should cover the entire population without exception\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Aoteaora on the \u2018cusp\u2019 of another serious measles outbreak, Emma Gleason finds out what happens when you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[492,7191,42,134,79760,20311,43,2935,40,38,41,39,56936],"class_list":{"0":"post-111417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-comments-enabled","9":"tag-disease","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-immunisations","13":"tag-measles","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-society","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-vaccinations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More cases have been confirmed in the current outbreak, and locations of interest include multiple high schools.<\/p>\n