Measles is tearing through communities in West Texas, where many parents are choosing not to have their children vaccinated and, in some sad cases, are paying the price
The parents of a six-year-old girl who died from measles have stood by their decision to not vaccinate their child.
Measles is a disease that can be fatal but also is highly preventable through vaccinations. Cases in West Texas are still on the rise two months after the outbreak began with local public health officials say they expect the virus to keep spreading for at least several more months.
As of Friday, the outbreak in Texas was up to 309 cases and one measles-related death, while New Mexico’s case count was up to 42 and also one measles-related death. Forty-two people have been hospitalized across the two states.
The man recently lost his daughter to measles
Texas’ outbreak, which has largely spread in undervaccinated Mennonite communities, could last a year based on studies of how measles previously spread in Amish communities in the U.S.
Those studies showed outbreaks lasted six to seven months, said Katherine Wells, director of the public health department in Lubbock, Texas. Lubbock’s hospitals have treated most of the outbreak’s patients and the public health department is closely assisting with the response.
A truck with a sign encouraging vaccinations is seen outside the Public Health office in Austin, Texas (
Image: SARA DIGGINS/AMERICAN-STATESMAN/USA TODAY NETWORK / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)
The parents of the child appeared on a video published by Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group once chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Speaking at times through a translation as they spoke a dialect of German, the parents explained how the child seemed to be suffering from classic symptoms. The fever persisted and she was rushed to the hospital where it was found she had pneumonia.
She was then transferred to the ICU where she was placed on a ventilator before dying.
A Lubbock Fire Department official, administers a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (
Image: AP)
The parents’ other four children had milder cases of measles, something the parents claim was due to the untested treatments from Veritas Wellness, a holistic clinic in Lubbock, Texas. There the family were treated by Dr. Ben Edwards.
When asked by the anti-vaccine group’s interviewer if they still feel the same way about the MMR vaccine they said: “Absolutely not take the MMR [vaccine]. The measles wasn’t that bad. [The other children] got over it pretty quickly. And Dr. Edwards was there for us.”
The outbreak includes 14 Texas counties, two New Mexico counties and four probable cases in Oklahoma, where health officials said the first two were “associated” with the West Texas and New Mexico outbreaks.
Measles is one of the world’s most contagious diseases. The way it spreads makes it especially hard to contain and outbreaks can have multiple peaks, said Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
