EDITORIAL: A sure-shot way to stop disease

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The growing number of measles cases in this country over the past few months, and the plummeting number of children receiving routine vaccines, leave you wondering whether we’re entering a new dark age of public health.

Public Health Ontario said recently that over the last eight months, the province has reported 1,440 cases. Alberta has seen 300 cases recently. What’s dispiriting about those numbers is that measles is entirely preventable through vaccination and has been considered eliminated in Canada since 1998. It comes at a time when there is a worldwide resurgence of the disease.

Before the measles vaccine was developed in 1954, there were as many as 400,000 cases of measles every year in Canada and 30-40 deaths per year from the disease. The measles vaccine is safe and effective and has saved millions of lives worldwide since then. Those people who think measles is a mild childhood disease should think again. It has serious side effects, including pneumonia, encephalitis and death.

If children aren’t getting vaccinated against measles, they are also not protected against mumps and rubella. If a pregnant woman contracts rubella, there’s a chance her child will suffer from serious birth defects, such as blindness.

With modern medicine and superdrugs, most children these days usually survive measles, but they often have to be hospitalized. That puts an unnecessary strain on the health-care system. And measles is highly infectious. One child can infect every unvaccinated child at a birthday party, as the virus lingers for a long time.

This is not a time to politicize vaccination. As Ontario Premier Doug Ford pointed out last week, the government can’t force families to inoculate their children. They can only educate them on the dangers of not protecting their youngsters. If enough children aren’t vaccinated, we lose the herd-immunity protection that vaccines provide.

In Ontario, unvaccinated students can be temporarily barred from school during a disease outbreak. They can be exempted from the vaccine mandate on medical, philosophical or religious grounds.

In a civil society, we should all do our bit to protect the youngest, weakest and most vulnerable from disease. We should vaccinate our children, not because the government forces us to do so. We should do it because we love our children and want to keep them safe.