As measles cases continue to rise around the globe, the World Health Organization warns it’s a signal that other disease outbreaks could soon follow.
The surging number of measles cases around the world is a stark warning sign that outbreaks of other vaccine-preventable diseases could be next, the World Health Organization warned Friday.
“It’s crucial to understand why measles matters,” said Dr. Kate O’Brien, director of the WHO’s Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals. “Its high transmissibility means that even small drops in vaccine coverage can trigger outbreaks, like a fire alarm going off when smoke is detected first.”
That is, measles is often the first disease to pop up when vaccination rates overall drop.
We are in for it now. Public heath has always ben a sisyphean task. Interrupt it and you lose ground immediately and constantly until you go backstop the fall. Which is to say, we’re in for it.
Not to mention invisible when it does it’s job right. When public health is supported people don’t get sick, epidemics don’t happen, things look good. So some genius gets it in their head to cut public health funding. Why waste money on public health when people aren’t sick. Then public health gets cut, people get sick, people blame the health care industry which isn’t the same as public health. That happenes until public health gets a little more support, and people stop getting sick, rinse any memory of the last time, and repeat.
This is the IT affect. When IT works, everything is invisible and you don’t see issues. When you take funding and personal away, suddenly you have all these issues that IT should have to fix, and now we suck because you can’t fix it, because so and so was the resident, or whatever tool we had paid for was cut for funding, etc.