Keeping measles under control

Published: May 15, 2008, 5:00 pm

Tags: teen health, teen help, help for parents, teen safety

MILWAUKEE _ Mary Rotar was getting ready to head home for the weekend, when the call came late that Friday afternoon. The 23-month-old girl with the rash and fever does have measles, the state health lab technician said. “My heart just sank,” said Rotar, infection control officer at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa. A measles outbreak, rare as it is these days, can be devastating. It’s highly contagious; someone sneezing across the room can pass it along, and the germs linger for as long as two hours. Nearly everyone over 50 remembers having measles _ the fever, the red blotches and the sting caused by even a slight beam of sunlight. In its heyday in 1958, measles affected more than 800,000 across the country. But a vaccine developed in 1963 worked wonders. By 2000, the disease had been declared eradicated in the United States. There are occasional outbreaks, though. The last big one in Wisconsin, in 1989-’90, infected more than 1,100

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