What will it take to get measles under control?
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On February 12, 1993, President Bill Clinton took the lectern at a public health center in Arlington, Virginia. Thank you. He was surrounded by kids sitting on the stage in front of him. Some had just received vaccinations. Clinton was just a few weeks into his presidency, and he was announcing what would become a major initiative of his first term, a massive push by the federal government to vaccinate children.
We came here today to make this day a landmark in the fight to protect the health of millions of our children.
One virus was top of mind.
The recent resurgence of measles in our country afflicted over 55,000 people, most of whom were children.
Remember, this was 1993. A prolonged measles outbreak between 1989 and 91 killed more than 100 people and sickened tens of thousands. A federal advisory committee found that pricey vaccines, cuts to federal support for vaccination, and low vaccination rates among young children had caused the outbreak to be so severe. This is what Clinton wanted to fix. So did lawmakers. Six months after that event at the Public Health Center, Congress passed Clinton's Comprehensive Childhood Immunization Act. The law helped the government purchase vaccines and negotiate prices with drug manufacturers. It made vaccines free for many children and helped the Department of Health and Human Services track childhood immunizations.
By the end of Clinton's second term in office, the World Health Organization had declared the elimination of measles in the United States. Fast forward 25 years.
This is going to be a large outbreak, and we are still on the side where we are increasing the number of cases.
Catherine Wells is the director of public health in Lubbock, a city near the heart of the current measles outbreak in West Texas.
The uptake for vaccines has definitely been a struggle. I mean, I want to be honest with that.
So far, there have been around 500 cases in West Texas since late January. Two kids there have died. The outbreak has spread to neighboring states, including New Mexico. On top of that, the Federal Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, announced it would terminate hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Lubbock is one of the cities which will lose that money. Consider this. 25 years after measles was officially eliminated in the U.S., the disease is once again spreading in West Texas and New Mexico. What can be done to get the virus under control? From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.
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It's Consider This from NPR. The last major measles outbreak in the U.S. was 2019. More than 1,200 people got sick. At the time, NPR spoke with Anthony Fauci, who was then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
People sometimes incorrectly and inappropriately think that to get infected with measles is Now, you might wonder how the U.S. could still be said to have eliminated measles when there are hundreds of cases. Well, in public health, elimination is a technical term. Specifically, it means the disease has not had a steady 12-month spread.
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