Doctors group urges measles shots as Disneyland outbreak spreads

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The leading US paediatrician group yesterday urged parents, schools and communities to vaccinate children against measles in the face of an outbreak that began at Disneyland in California in December and has spread to more than 80 people in seven states and Mexico.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said all children should get the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella between 12 and 15 months of age and again between 4 and 6 years old.

“A family vacation to an amusement park – or a trip to the grocery store, a football game or school – should not result in children becoming sickened by an almost 100 percent preventable disease,” Errol Alden, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

“We are fortunate to have an incredibly effective tool that can prevent our children from suffering. That is so rare in medicine,” Alden said.

The California Department of Public Health has reported 68 confirmed measles cases among state residents since December, most linked to an initial exposure at Disneyland or its adjacent Disney California Adventure Park.

Fourteen more cases linked to Disney parks were reported yesterday out of state – five in Arizona, three in Utah, two in Washington state and one each in Oregon, Colorado, Nevada and Mexico.

Officials say the outbreak began when an infected person, likely from out of the country, visited the resort in Anaheim between Dec 15 and Dec 20.

Among those infected are at least five Disney employees and a student at Huntington Beach High School, some 15 miles (24 km) from the park. The school has ordered its unvaccinated students to stay home until Jan 29.

The outbreak has renewed the debate over the so-called anti-vaccination movement in which fears about potential side effects of vaccines, fuelled by now-debunked theories suggesting a link to autism, have led a small minority of parents to refuse to allow their children to be inoculated.