Measles, a childhood disease, has caused suffering to mankind for thousands of years. However, the search for an effective measles vaccine lasted two hundred years and has finally ended in success. Now, for the first time, measles is a preventable disease. You may ask, ”How is this important to children?”

    Every year measles kills twice as many Americans as polio does. More children die from measles than from any other common childhood disease. Also complications of some degree occur in about one child out of six. Most complication include pneumonia and ear disorders. Another after-effect of measles- brain damage – is less common, but it can have such serious consequence that it deserves special attention.

    Brain damage due to measles sounds like something far away from our experience. In reality, it is not. Like other injury, damage to the brain can be very slight or very severe. It is quite possible that we have never seen or heard a child who has severe brain damage – the child would either have died or would be in an institution. However, in medical research a relation has been found between measles and such things as behaviour problems, personality changes and dulling of mental ability. For example, a child may be bad-tempered or a little slow to learn after he has recovered from measles.

One of the important findings of the research on measles is that ....