Biology and Medicine

Abstract

2015 Californian Measles Outbreak: An Eye Opener for Local Public Health Authorities

Saurabh Ram Bihari Lal Shrivastava, Prateek Saurabh Shrivastava and Jegadeesh Ramasamy

Measles is an acute infectious viral disease which predominantly affects the children. It has been more than a decade that measles has been declared eliminated from the American region owing to the absence of endemic transmission and subsequently because of the maintenance of high measles vaccine coverage. A suspected case of measles in California was reported in an 11 year old unvaccinated child, on fifth of January 2015, and since then almost 147 measles cases have been reported in four nations. The current outbreak in different parts of America has again highlighted the inability of the public health authorities to sustain high immunization coverage or even ensure adequate immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases among the international travelers. To conclude, the current measles outbreak in America has alerted the public health authorities to expand their vision of activities by ensuring adequate immunization coverage among the local residents and at the same time to take appropriate measures to effectively counter the imported cases.