Niamh Shackleton
A doctor has issued a stark warning amid the increasing number of children contracting measles.
In 2000, America declared itself as measles-free, but the illness has since had a resurgence in parts of the country — Texas in particular.
The last recorded measles death in the US was in 2015. However, in a sad update, it's been reported that an unvaccinated child in Texas died from the dangerous disease last month.
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While Texas is thought to be one of the hardest hit states, as of March 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was aware of nine states that had cases of measles, the University of Nebraska Medical Center reported.
Across the nine states there's said to be 164 cases of the disease, 146 of which were in West Texas.
In the wake of the rising number of cases, Dr. Ron Cook, chief health officer for the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, has urged people to stay clear of any 'measles parities'.
This is the idea that a 'party' is hosted so that children who do not have a certain disease (such as measles or chickenpox) are purposely exposed to it and supposedly become immune.
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"We can’t predict who is going to do poorly with measles, being hospitalized, potentially get pneumonia or encephalitis, or potentially pass away from this," said Cook, as per The Dallas Morning News.
"It’s a foolish thing to go have measles parties."
Cook went on to say that people should make sure that they and their children are 'well-vaccinated'.
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Dr Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton, has also spoken out about how measles can prove fatal.
He said: "Measles is vaccine-preventable. With two doses of the MMR vaccine, that stops measles in its tracks.
"With a high uptake, we could literally eradicate it from the planet, like smallpox. A lower uptake, partly due to too much covid interrupting health service delivery in the pandemic, means children in the UK and globally are being affected.
"It is a nasty infection in unvaccinated children, and it can and does kill."
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Elsewhere, the CDC says that nearly one to three of every 1,000 children to get measles will die from complications stemming from the contagious infection.
In terms of symptoms of measles, the CDC says that symptoms usually take place seven to 14 days after exposure.
Such symptoms include high fever, cough, runny nose, and red, watery eyes.
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"Tiny white spots (Koplik spots) may appear inside the mouth two to three days after symptoms begin," it adds.