Vaccines and Travel: What We Can Learn From The Disneyland Measles Outbreak
If the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland tells us anything, it’s that you should get your recommended shots, especially before traveling.
The Disneyland measles outbreak, which has continued to spread, made me realize we haven’t talked about vaccinations and other travel-related health issues in a while. If you plan to visit another country, not only does it make sense to be protected against prevalent diseases, sometimes it’s also a condition of entry. To use one example, China requires a yellow fever vaccination certificate for any traveler over nine months of age arriving from a country with a risk of yellow fever transmission, even if you only transit the airport in that country.
In other words, it’s not always a choice to skip a shot if you want to travel. But beyond the question of choice, let’s consider some facts as they pertain to measles. Before there was a vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3 to 4 million people got the measles each year in the U.S. and 400 to 500 died. By the mid-’90s, the number dropped to fewer than 1,000 cases per year, and in some years fewer than 100, with zero to two deaths.
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What caused the reduction? As much as some still believe the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine is unsafe and ineffective, the study often quoted to make the case was debunked long ago. In fact, not only was it erroneous, it was proven fraudulent in 2011. Even Jenny McCarthy backtracked on her anti-vaccine views, albeit awkwardly. The drop in measles cases coincides with the use of the vaccine. Given the numbers, that’s not a coincidence.
If you don’t believe in the effectiveness of vaccinations and choose to avoid them, please don’t travel. You’re more likely to contract a preventable disease and either infect someone in another country, or return with new bugs in your own veins and infect someone in your own neighborhood. If, on the other hand, you recognize that vaccines are effective, listen to the CDC. First, it recommends you are up to date on routine shots, including MMR, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, chickenpox, polio, and a yearly flu shot. And here’s what it has to say about them:
“Why are routine vaccines important for travelers?
“Because of good vaccine coverage of children in the United States, some of the diseases prevented by routine vaccines rarely occur here. However, these diseases can be much more common in other countries, even in areas where you wouldn’t normally worry about travel-related illnesses. For example, in 2011, there was a large outbreak of measles in Europe, and many unvaccinated American travelers were infected. Some even brought it back home and spread it to other unvaccinated people in their communities. Being up-to-date on your routine vaccines will give you the best protection against these illnesses.”
If you believe that organizations like the CDC and the World Health Organization are doing their best to improve and protect our health, then it stands to reason that you should follow their recommendations for vaccinations and other preventive measures when traveling, aside from the requirements issued by the respective governments themselves.
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The CDC includes a great tool on its website that allows you to select the country you plan to visit and quickly check boxes about the type of traveler you are—e.g. traveling with children, going on a cruise ship, mission/disaster relief, etc. It then takes you to a page about the country with specific sections titled, Vaccines and Medicines, Stay Healthy and Safe, Healthy Travel Packing List, Travel Health Notices, and After Your Trip.It even has a Clinician View option for doctors seeking recommendations for their patients.
If you want even more info, or if you like to double-verify, you can review the International Travel and Health section of the WHO website. And for a quick primer about some of the more common diseases, check out Dr. Richard Dawood’s recommendations from our own pages, where he describes How to Deal with Pricks.
And speaking of those sometimes terror inducing needles, here’s a little helpful information from my father-in-law, Dr. Phil Goscienski, who is a retired pediatric infectious diseases specialist: Needle technology has advanced in the last couple decades. Vaccination needles tend to be thinner and sharper than they used to be and less painful, so you don’t have to feel as bad when it’s time for your kids—or you—to get a shot.
By Eric Jordan
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photo: dmfoss / Alamy
