The city`s measles epidemic is under control, thanks to a ”classic”
public health effort by workers who took to the streets to fight the disease, health officials said Wednesday.
Health workers ”doggedly tracked and attacked the measles virus through the inner city, up the stairways of public housing projects and on the streets,” said Richard Krieg, the city`s acting health commissioner.
Six people died before the city conquered the outbreak through an extensive immunization and public awareness campaign, Krieg said. There is now ”a clear downturn” across the city, he said.
”Within the span of four months we`ve made remarkable progress in containing measles,” he said. He added that ”outbreaks are now occurring in over 100 cities nationwide.”
Richard Biek, the Health Department`s deputy commissioner for medical affairs, said the outbreak started because not enough pre-school children were immunized and ”we didn`t know this.”
A study of children who came to Cook County and Children`s Memorial Hospitals` emergency rooms for any reason found ”large pockets with no immunizations-40 to 50 percent of kids under 5 who appeared in the emergency rooms,” Biek said.
Many were children of poor, single mothers who didn`t consider shots a priority for their youngsters, he said. Another outbreak could occur in preschoolers in another three years if the problem isn`t solved, he added.
”We have to try to figure out how to reach these mothers” and ”make it easy” for their kids to get measles shots, he said. He said officials were thinking of requiring health care facilities to check children`s immunizations whenever they come in, even if it`s for other medical reasons.
Children aged 12 to 15 months and older should be immunized, he said.