I remember being very sick when I had measles as a child. I was confined to a darkened room for more than a week, and there was concern that it would affect my vision. Decades later, I work with patients who have had encephalitis as a result of measles, and families who are left bereaved by the disease.
Because of the success of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, most people have never seen a case of measles and think it is just a rash that clears up in a few days. But measles is not the innocuous childhood illness that the unfamiliar or vaccine deniers believe. Measles is serious and deadly. Complications occur in up to 40% of patients, and may include blindness, hearing loss, pneumonia, seizures, and meningitis. The numbers are alarming: between one and three in 1,000 children with measles will develop encephalitis, 10%-to-15% of whom will die, and 25% of whom will have permanent neurological damage. For children under the age of 1, one in 5,500 will develop subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a rare and fatal degenerative neurological condition that can develop years after a measles infection.