Opinion: Reducing the threat of vaccine-preventable diseases starts with kids
Americans have been warned — again — about lax attention to routine vaccinations. This time the warning comes from measles, an age-old, vaccine-preventable disease, with an outbreak in central Ohio among nearly 80 children and counting, almost all of them unvaccinated against measles.
Once well-controlled in the U.S., which has maintained “measles elimination status” for almost 20 years, this disease may no longer be a rarity as millions of children in the U.S. are missing or behind on routine vaccinations. Globally, there were about 9 million measles infections and 128,000 deaths in 2021, and a record high of nearly 40 million children missing a vaccine dose last year.
