Outbreak of measles in a teenage school population: The need to immunize susceptible adolescents

D. Morse, M. O'shea, G. Hamilton, N. Soltanpoor, G. Leece, Elizbeth Miller*, David Brown

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    25 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    An outbreak of measles occurred in a community school and the surrounding area in Crowborough, East Sussex, UK, from December 1992 to February 1993. There were 96 suspected cases reported: 66 cases among 1673 students at one school and 30 community cases. The majority of suspected cases were in those aged 11–17 (78%), 2 cases occurred in infants < 1 year old and 8 cases in adults aged 18 years or over. Data collected on 60 (91 %) of the 66 suspect school cases showed 56 (93%) had an illness which met a case definition of measles. Eighteen had confirmatory IgM measles antibody. Two cases were hospitalized. The local percentage uptake for measles immunization for the school age years affected varied between 64 % and 84 %. A survey of parents showed that approximately 74% of the students attending the school had a history of measles immunization. The immunization rates reported by parents for children who developed measles was 21 %. (29 % based on GP records) compared with 77 % for those who remained well. Vaccine efficacy was estimated to be 92%. This outbreak, along with others recently reported in older unimmunized children in the UK, reinforces the need for catch-up immunization programmes to reach this susceptible group of adolescents.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)355-365
    Number of pages11
    JournalEpidemiology and Infection
    Volume113
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Oct 1994

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