Paper On Measles

An outbreak of Measles would have a huge impact on a community as a whole.  Educating students would come to a temporary halt as students would need to be assessed by healthcare workers for any physical ailments and for anyone that has never been vaccinated.  Any students discovered to be symptomatic and possibly infected would need to be isolated and treated, and any students without immunity would need to be vaccinated.  This would also be the case with businesses in that employees would need to be assessed as well, which would slow down productivity for the businesses.  Hospitals would have to invest time into making sure all healthcare workers were immunized and getting immunizations to the ones that were not or send them home after making sure they were not infected.  Special

Around 10 days after you get the measles infection, the following symptoms begin to appear:

It replicates inside the nose, throat, and regional lymph nodes. Early symptoms are uncommon but may include fever, loss of appetite, muscle aches, and headache. High temperature, usually lasts for three to four days. (Mumps treatment, 2016). Also, eating or drinking acidic or citrus foods can cause discomfort. Other symptoms may include testicular pain in males, abdominal pain, seizures, stiff neck, weakness and fatigue and difficulty swallowing. Tenderness in the cheeks and under the jaw are also symptoms of the mumps. Often has the nickname “chipmunk cheeks” because of it’s ability to cause the parotid glands that produce saliva to swell up. (Everything about the mumps, 2016). Symptoms typically appear sixteen to eighteen days after the infection. Swelling usually lasts for about seven to ten days. Although, not everyone will have the typical symptoms; many infected people will just have respiratory symptoms or cold like symptoms. (CDC,

According to the Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine Preventable Diseases textbook aka “The Pink Book” (2015) which was produced jointly by the Communication and Education Branch, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Measles is a paramyxovirus with the primary site of infection in the nasopharynx. It has an incubation period of 10-12 days. The first symptoms to occur are fevers (increasing stepwise 103-105 degrees), cough, runny nose and conjunctivitis approximately 2-3 days after exposure and last 2-4 days. The second part of the infection occurs approximately 14 days after exposure; which is evidence by Koplik spots on the oral mucosa. Then, 1-2 days later, a maculopapular rash develops along the hair line, face,

(Center For Disease Control).Those at greatest risk for contracting the disease are individuals who do not vaccinate or children to young to receive the vaccine. Signs and symptoms of measles include high fevers up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, rash, cough, conjunctivitis and runny nose. Many other complications may evolve once a person is infected with measles some being otitis media and pneumonia. The infected person is contagious roughly about 4 days prior to the rash forming and for about 4-5 days after the rash disappears. Most people that have died from the disease did not die from measles but the complications of measles and secondary illnesses. (The History Of Vaccines).

Facts and figures available to study the epidemiological data for the outbreak of measles include gathering suspected and confirmed cases of this disease from the World Health Organization. This is done by gathering serum samples from all suspected cases to determine if a measles specific immunoglobulin antibody is detected. This particular disease lives in the nose and throat of the infected individual and is considered contagious for a period of four days before the rash appears and for a further four days after the sighting of the rash.

In early April 2013 a measles outbreak was discovered in North Carolina. By mid-May the outbreak had been identified in Stokes and Orange Counties via 23 active cases. Every case was linked back to a family that had spent 3 months in India and had not been vaccinated. By the 16th of April the state laboratory of Public Health was able to confirm the diagnosis, with the last known case being confirmed on May 7th. The investigation of this outbreak revealed 4 patients with a confirmed diagnosis that had received one of vaccination of the two part series. The other 19 cases had not ever been vaccinated.

One in every 1000 children who contract measles will develop encephalitis, one in 1000 children will die from it, and 25% will have neurological brain damage (National Center for Immunizations n.d.). Morbidity: The most common is ear infections--one in every 20 people with measles will have permanent hearing damage (CDC, 2015). Expectant mothers who contract the disease can go into premature labor and birth, have a spontaneous abortion, or deliver a low birth weight baby.

Every person that has not been vaccinated by the MMR is at risk of contracting the disease. In the CDC’s vigilance to keep the United States free of measles, it has listed several key challenges. They are the following:

b) Just in 2013, measles has officially killed more than 100 children in Pakistan, almost 20 children in Nigeria, and sickened more than 2,000 children in China. In 2012, the United Kingdom reported the most elevated number of new cases in 18 years. The U.S. reported an incredible 222 measles cases in 2011, up from a normal of 60 cases (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention 168).

In Michelle Fox’s article, Expect measles outbreak to continue, says doctor, Dr. William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, says that the outbreak will continue for some time because there is a sufficient number of unvaccinated children to continue the spread of measles. According to the CDC, there have been 84 cases of measles and 67 of those have been linked to the outbreak at Disney. Dr. Schaffner also reiterates that measles can be brought to the United States from overseas. If someone from another country comes here with measles and is around unvaccinated children, there is potential to spread the disease.

a reddish bump known as Koplik's spots(Carson-DeWitt). Shortly after, the throat will become red, swollen, and sore(Carson-DeWitt). A couple of days after Koplik’s spots appear the actual measles rash begins, which progresses from the head, to the face and neck and to the trunk, and abdomen, next along the arms and legs(Carson-DeWitt). The rash appears to be flat, red patches, but eventually develops raised bumps. Once the rash starts to appear, the fever usually starts to climb higher reaching as high of 105 degrees fahrenheit(Carson-DeWitt). There may be vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, and swollen lymph nodes. Around this time the patient would be feeling awful. After 5 days the rash begins to fade, turns brown and starts to

Mumps is a severe viral disease characterized by unilateral or bilateral tenderness or swollen lymph node or other salivary glands. Mumps travels through a person-to-person contact or through direct contact with respiratory drops or saliva from an infected person. Compared to measles and varicella, which can be transmitted through the spread of aerosols, mumps is less infectious and damaging.Mumps has symptoms that cause damage to adult males and

The most serious of these is obviously death, and people can and do die from measles; there are 1 million deaths worldwide caused by measles.

In order to detect if a person has the mumps the first thing would be to look at the symptoms. Mainly the swollen jaws would be a good indication. After this confirming what we think is the next step so a sample must be collected. Depending on what exactly you are looking for and what type of test is to be done depends on what type of sample you must get. For a detection of the mumps antibody a blood sample is going to be the choice specimen. To get this sample a normal venipuncture procedure will be used. If you are testing for the virus in a culture there are several specimens that can be used. Examples include blood, urine, CSF, nasopharyngeal aspirate/washing and throat swabs (Measles and Mumps Tests). We use antibody testing most commonly to determine if a person has this virus. Once infected the body make IgM antibodies to the virus. Over time these antibodies disintegrate and IgG antibodies take their place forever, allowing the person to become immune to the mumps virus if ever in contact with it again. There is also another test that detects the genetic strain of the virus called the RT-PCR test (Measles and Mumps Tests). This is used to help determine a cause especially if the results do not match the doctors suspicions.