Vaccine refusals fuel measles outbreak

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Parents refusing to have their children vaccinated against measles have helped drive cases of the illness to their worst levels in a dozen years in the United States, health officials reported on Thursday.

In 2008 alone, 131 cases of measles have been reported, with 15 serious enough to be hospitalized, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

Most of those infected were not vaccinated and there is no reason for any cases to occur when vaccines can prevent them, the CDC said in a weekly report on death and diseases.

"Measles can be a severe, life-threatening illness" the CDC's Dr. Anne Schuchat said in a statement. "These cases resulted primarily from failure to vaccinate, many because of philosophical or religious belief."

Only 13 percent of the cases were imported, the CDC said, naming Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, India, Israel, China, Germany, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Russia. "This is the lowest percentage of imported measles cases since 1996," the CDC report reads.

At least 15 patients, including four children younger than 15, were hospitalized, although no one has died, the CDC said.

"In the decade before the measles vaccination program began, an estimated 3 to 4 million persons in the United States were infected each year. Of these, 400 to 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and another 1,000 developed chronic disability from measles encephalitis."

Encephalitis is a life-threatening inflammation of the brain that can be caused by viral infections such as measles.

More than 90 percent of the patients were not vaccinated, the CDC said, had no evidence of having been vaccinated, or were babies too young to have been vaccinated.