Over the past year, I have watched many children die of measles. In the final stages, little lungs, filled with fluid and racked with inflammation, struggle for oxygen. The victims breathe faster and faster, gasping for air until, exhausted, they stop.
Where I live, in one of the poorest places on earth, measles kills thousands of children a year. It’s a grim lesson about a disease that should have been eradicated years ago. And it’s a grave warning against assuming “it can’t happen here” in more fortunate countries like the U.S., where the disease is making a comeback as parents fail to take the disease seriously. For years, U.S. pediatricians have gone their entire careers without seeing a case of measles, much less a death. Now, I fear, that may change.
I’m chief of medical research — and the only pediatrician — for Sankuru Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sankuru is about the size of Ohio and has around 3 million people, half of whom are under 18. The Congo’s poorest province, it is profoundly underdeveloped. It has no paved roads or airports. Most villages can be reached only on foot or by using tiny motorcycles, which few can afford. Municipal water or electrical systems do not exist. I came to Sankuru for a unique reason: I grew up there. My family has been serving in Sankuru since 1950. Since I was a child, working alongside my mother in under-5 baby clinics, I have felt a call to serve the children of Sankuru.