The Travel Doctor
Traveller's medical & vaccination centre
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Travel Doctor TMVC provides the latest health and travel alerts, including updates from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
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Imported Measles
Monday, 20 April, 2009
A case of measles imported from India into the United States is the latest in a growing list of cross-border measles episodes. Apart from this case 2009 has seen cases in California traced to a case infected in England, a cluster of sick children with measles in Taiwan traced to an unvaccinated child travelling from Vietnam and 2 other outbreaks related to cases who had visited mainland China. Over the past decade there have been more than 30 documented outbreaks in various countries both “developing” and “developed” (including Australia) where the source has clearly been a visitor or returning resident who had not been vaccinated.
Measles is highly infectious and given the frequency of international travel introduction of cases from offshore is difficult to avoid, but the disease can be effectively prevented through vaccination.
