Measles is an infectious disease that threatens not only children, but everyone who is not immune to

Laboratory-confirmed cases of measles: four adults and one 14-year-old child — data for 10 months of this year in the Lviv region. The course of the disease in all of them was of average severity.

Measles is a serious infectious disease that threatens not only children, but everyone who is not immune to it. Immunity to measles can be acquired either after an illness or after vaccination. Immunity is better acquired through vaccination than as a result of an illness. Measles is always followed by the so-called immune amnesia, i.e. "memory loss" of immunity, its weakening to various pathogens.

One of the frequent serious complications of measles is pneumonia.

Measles results in death in approximately one case per 1,000, and in this case, the cause of death is not only pneumonia, but also another complication of measles - encephalitis, which can develop not only during the acute period of the disease, but also several years after measles. In this case, we are talking about subacute sclerosing panencephalitis. It is he who will be discussed in the post.

In general, encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain. The development of panencephalitis is due to the fact that the virus remains in the body for years after the infection and eventually causes brain damage. The disease has a slow, but irreversible course, and always ends in death, because there is no cure in this case.

In the case of panencephalitis, a person's brain is slowly destroyed: first there is a headache, there are mood swings, there may be nausea, swaying, then the vision in one or both eyes may disappear, the gait becomes increasingly unstable, and paralysis begins to progress. A person who has developed subacute panencephalitis dies in a few months or at most a year, and during this time he acquires disability and loses his personality.

Panencephalitis most often occurs in children who were infected with the measles virus at an early age, especially in the first year of life.

The only way to prevent measles and all its possible complications is to vaccinate the child in a timely manner at one year (the first dose is administered) and at six years of age (the second dose is administered) with the PDA vaccine. Until the child is vaccinated, he is vulnerable. Therefore, it is fundamentally important that all people around are also vaccinated against measles. This is also true for other infections.

Protect your own!

Source: Ministry of Health