Measles killed more than 2.6 million a year worldwide before vaccines
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Measles killed more than 2.6 million a year worldwide before vaccines
A member of the Permanent Advisory Commission on Immunizations of the State of São Paulo, Guido Levi says that in the early 2000s he was called by a group of residents in an infectious disease ward in São Paulo. The young doctors were puzzled that no proposed test had detected the cause of the rash and high fever that had brought a child to hospital.
“Nobody knew what it was. The residents said they were going to present the tests requested, which still didn’t have positive results, and I said: ‘Guys, you don’t need any tests. That’s measles’. They were very suspicious, because they had never seen measles”,
recalls Guido Levi.
The success of immunization made a large part of the population and even doctors forget that measles is a serious and lethal disease. According to the Ministry of Health, one in every 20 children with measles may develop pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death from measles in childhood.
Furthermore, about one 
out of ten 
children with measles develop an acute otitis that can result in permanent hearing loss. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) estimates that, from 2000 to 2017, measles vaccination prevented about 21.1 million deaths, making the vaccine one of the best investments in public health.
“Measles was
recalls Guido Levi, who saw vaccines transform this scenario.
Immunization managed to eliminate this disease not only from Brazil, but from the entire American continent, which was recognized by PAHO on September 27, 2016. At the time, the organization recalled that measles killed 2.6 million people per year in the world before the 1980s. To get an idea of what this number represents, it is greater than the total number of victims of covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic.
“Nobody knew what it was. The residents said they were going to present the tests requested, which still didn’t have positive results, and I said: ‘Guys, you don’t need any tests. That’s measles’. They were very suspicious, because they had never seen measles”,
recalls Guido Levi.
The success of immunization made a large part of the population and even doctors forget that measles is a serious and lethal disease. According to the Ministry of Health, one in every 20 children with measles may develop pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death from measles in childhood.
Furthermore, about one out of ten children with measles develop an acute otitis that can result in permanent hearing loss. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) estimates that, from 2000 to 2017, measles vaccination prevented about 21.1 million deaths, making the vaccine one of the best investments in public health.
“Measles was
recalls Guido Levi, who saw vaccines transform this scenario.
Immunization managed to eliminate this disease not only from Brazil, but from the entire American continent, which was recognized by PAHO on September 27, 2016. At the time, the organization recalled that measles killed 2.6 million people per year in the world before the 1980s. To get an idea of what this number represents, it is greater than the total number of victims of covid-19 in the first year of the pandemic.
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