QL: Measles outbreak in Beerwah

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/mar/02/measles-outbreak-beerwah/

Measles outbreak in Beerwah

12:00a.m. 2nd March 2009
| By Rae Wilson (http://www.thedaily.com.au/staff/rae-wilson/contact/)

http://media.thedaily.com.au/images/icon-poll.gif Poll: Are your children immunised?





Yes, it's the only sensible thing to do
No, there are dangers with immunisation
Yes they are but I regret it

See the poll results. (http://www.thedaily.com.au/polls/2009/mar/child-immunisation-poll/results/)

Students at Beerwah High are being urged to attend school today armed with their vaccination records, as the school combats an outbreak of measles.

Queensland Health and Education Queensland will work together today to check written and electronic immunisation records of staff and students.
There will be an immunisation clinic at Beerwah’s community centre. Students who want to be immunised will be escorted there, 250 metres from the school.

There are two confirmed and four suspected measles cases at the school. Three of the four suspected measles sufferers were not vaccinated.

(Hilary: Question... What about the two confirmed cases... were they vaccinated???)

The school has 1073 students and more than 100 staff.

Only staff born after 1965 needs to be screened.

If children can provide documented evidence of having one MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, they can receive their second dose and return to school immediately.

If a child is not vaccinated, they can receive one dose of the MMR vaccine and return to school 14 days later.

The only students who cannot go to school are those who have not been immunised and do not want to begin the immunisation process, to protect themselves and other students from infection.

Sunshine Coast education regional executive director Rob McAlpine said the school would provide work for those students to complete at home.

He said students who had not been immunised and did not want to have the vaccine could not attend school until 14 days after the last case of measles had been confirmed.

“Education Queensland’s prime concern is for the health and safety of all students and staff of Beerwah State High School,” he said.

(Hilary, but never mind the reactions, because they never happen.)

“Education Queensland strongly recommends that students of Beerwah SHS attend school today. This is especially so for students who have been immunised or who wish to be immunised.

Mr McAlpine, who has been on the Sunshine Coast for 24 years, said every family at the school was contacted over the weekend and emails had been sent to every student.

“This is the first time to my recollection where we’ve had a serious case of measles, but we regularly deal with meningococcal and other serious infectious diseases,” he said. “We anticipate a very high level of student attendance because we have been telling families personally.

“There may be some who must go home, but we need them there (today) to commence the process.”

Initial symptoms of measles are fever, lethargy, runny nose, coughing and sore red eyes, followed by a red blotchy rash. The rash starts on the face and then spreads.







http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/mar/03/official-fear-measles-epidemic/

Official fear Coast measles epidemic

12:00a.m. 3rd March 2009
| By Mark Bode (http://www.thedaily.com.au/staff/mark-bode/contact/)

Beerwah High is ground zero for a measles outbreak which health officials fear will spread throughout the Sunshine Coast.



As hundreds of students were screened yesterday to determine if they are at risk of the contracting the highly contagious virus following two confirmed cases and one suspected case at the school (http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/mar/02/measles-outbreak-beerwah/), doctors across the Coast have been warned to be on the lookout for patients exhibiting symptoms of the potentially deadly virus.

Queensland Health's decision to alert GPs was a response to the Coast's poor immunisation rate against the now rare disease.

Dr Andrew Langley, of the Sunshine Coast population health unit, described the outbreak at Beerwah High as a "significant public health concern" because of the high risk of it spreading outside the school.

"The main concern is this (the Beerwah High outbreak) may spread to other schools and the broader community," he said.

"These are the risks because of mingling. We know kids (at Beerwah High) have got siblings in other schools.

"If it gets in the broader community, it will not only be a health risk but it will cause a social disruption," Dr Langley said.

He said the high measles immunisation rates achieved in most parts of the country over the past four decades had not been duplicated in parts of the Coast.

"The Sunshine Coast is at particular risk (of an outbreak)," he said.

As of late yesterday, Queensland Health officials were still awaiting the results of the Beerwah High screenings.

But Dr Langley said he expected between 20 to 30% of the more than 1000 students who attend the school to be at risk.

Students who received their first measles vaccination yesterday have been barred from returning to school for two weeks, while students who previously received one vaccination can return to school immediately provided they get a second injection.

Children who remain unimmunised can only return to school two weeks after the onset of the last reported case.

Education Queensland regional executive director Rob McAlpine said students sent home were expected to keep up with their school work and would be supervised by teachers.

"We'll provide an education program for them at home," he said.

"Our primary concern is the health and welfare of staff and students."

Measles

• Measles is a highly infectious virus spread by droplets that cause fever, a cough and a rash.

• One in 25 children who contract measles develop pneumonia and one in 2000 develop encephalitis (brain inflammation).

• For every 10 children who develop measles encephalitis, one will die and four will have permanent brain damage.

• About one in 25,000 will develop brain degeneration, which is always fatal.

[magical1]

There is NOTHING in that article to tell you what to do if you suspect Measles. What would be wrong with telling them all to go and get a dose of vitaminA?

This is OTT scaremongering at it's worst.

[Spy]

Why are all the good things happening in Queensland????

:bangshead: Very jealous. :rolleyes:

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,25125839-3102,00.html

Measles outbreak shuts classes at Beerwah High School

Sophie Elsworth, Janelle Miles and Tanya Chilcott
March 02, 2009 11:00pm

HEALTH officials fear a mini-measles epidemic is developing on the Sunshine Coast after confirmation of an outbreak at Beerwah State High School.
Students and staff at the school who have not been immunised against the highly contagious virus have been ordered to stay home for at least 14 days after confirmation two teenagers have the "now rare disease".

Another five students with measles-like symptoms are awaiting test results.
Classes at the school, which has 1071 students, were suspended yesterday while authorities, concerned at the possibility of the virus spreading into the wider community, checked students' immunisation records.

Parents were annoyed their children had to wait for hours in the heat while officials verified documentation.

David Delardes, of Glasshouse Mountains, who has three children at the school, described the process as "a real mess".

"One of my boys doesn't have documentation of his vaccinations so he didn't come to school today," Mr Delardes said.

"I am a bit peeved about the whole thing. I hear that half the teachers aren't even here because they can't prove they've been vaccinated either."

Rowena Phillips' son, Mark, 14, was one of dozens of students who queued at the Beerwah Community Centre to be immunised.

Those students will also have to wait two weeks before returning to school to give the vaccination time to take effect.

"Mark has already had his measles vaccination, but because we lived in South Australia we needed to get the documentation from there and that could take days," Ms Phillips said. "I'm pretty jacked off. I didn't get told anything about what was going on."

Queensland Health's Andrew Langley defended the process, particularly given the Sunshine Coast hinterland's relatively low immunisation rates.

"This is an unusual situation," he said. "We're concerned about the potential of this being a bigger outbreak because of the vaccination rates up here. We're trying to intervene to break the chain of transmission."

Dr Langley said measles was not a "trivial disease".

Complications can include pneumonia and encephalitis, or swelling of the brain. In rare cases, it can be fatal. Measles symptoms include fever, lethargy, a runny nose, cough and sore red eyes, followed a few days later by a red, blotchy rash.

Sunshine Coast education regional executive director Rob McAlpine said the school had tried to contact all parents at the weekend and emailed students twice about the measles outbreak. He said 672 students attended the school yesterday and 99 had been identified as being unable to return until 14 days after the last notified infection.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,25136519-3102,00.html

Doctors fear more Sunshine Coast epidemics

Janelle Miles and Sophie Elsworth
March 03, 2009 11:00pm

DOCTORS have warned of mumps and rubella outbreaks in the Sunshine Coast hinterland as they battle a "mini-measles epidemic" at Beerwah High School.

Australian Medical Association Queensland president-elect Mason Stevenson said immunisation rates in both the Gold and Sunshine coasts' hinterland regions were about 70 per cent, 20 per cent lower than the national average.

Dr Stevenson said those regions had greater numbers of parents who conscientiously objected to immunisation.

He said the dangers of communities developing measles, mumps and rubella were much higher in areas with immunisation rates substantially lower than 90 per cent.

"In Queensland, specifically on the Sunshine Coast, we have already had a whooping cough epidemic affecting many hundreds of both adults and children ... as a result of falling immunisation rates," he said.

"It's for the same reason we expect there to be rubella epidemics in the future and mumps epidemics in the future."

Pregnant women infected with rubella, or german measles, risk their babies being born with severe abnormalities. Mumps can cause infertility and measles also can be a serious illness.

The warning comes as Queensland Health confirmed six students at Beerwah State High School have measles. Another nine have measles-like symptoms and are awaiting test results.

Queensland Health said none of the 15 students had documented evidence of full measles vaccinations.

Staff and students who have not had measles vaccinations have been told to stay away for at least two weeks.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,25138382-27197,00.html

When jabs are common sense

By Jane Fynes-Clinton (http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/author/0,23829,5000521-27197,00.html)
March 04, 2009 11:00pm

THE measles outbreak at a Sunshine Coast school this week was concerning, sadly unavoidable and deeply irritating because of a lack of immunisation.
Now directly attributed to poor immunisation rates in the broad hinterland area, it seems incredible that a disease that was so close to being eradicated could slip into a semi-rural community because of some parents' primitive beliefs that immunisation is somehow the work of ill-doers designed to damage their children.

The bare fact is that not to immunise a child against known serious diseases without a medical reason is irresponsible and neglectful.

To risk exposing a child to a preventable disease because of an untenable and unproven belief that immunisation is bad is like denying them food or education.

It is incongruous that the outbreak of a dozen cases at Beerwah State High School comes just a month after Australia was declared measles-free in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation.

Sunshine Coast population health unit doctor Andrew Langley, the doctor charged with handling worried parents' concerns and the screening and vaccination program at the school, said the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast has among the lowest rates of general immunisation in Australia.

The poor immunisation uptake is unfair to those people who cannot be immunised for medical reasons. It is unfair to young babies and pregnant mothers. It is unfair to those who chose to have their children immunised in an effort to build a collectively healthier community.

The consequences of this lack of action may well be felt years down the track, and have a ripple effect in the community, as has been the case with the Beerwah High measles outbreak.

My elder daughter, a student at the school, is immunised fully. But the outbreak and intense drama at school have interrupted her Year 12 studies, and those of her peers. As functional school days, Monday was a write-off, Tuesday was disrupted. A third of the school population - because of not being immunised - will be absent for a fortnight.

(which means her daughter will have a much smaller class and better teacher attention...)

Stress and confusion have been exacerbated by a lack of communication and information to students during the screening process.

It has been interesting to be a parent in a school community where two government departments have had to work together. Despite the relatively small scale of the task - with about 1000 students plus staff - it has been interesting to hear the community rumour mill.

An absence of transparency and forthcoming information (privacy legislation cited) means Chinese whispers have stepped into the chasm.

Suggestions abound about how many cases there are and who is afflicted with the disease.

I have also found it curious to watch how the application of protocols works in a world of working parents, school-assessment schedules and class timetables (the two are not well-matched).

I suggest this week's outbreak of measles at Beerwah State High School is a consequence of worldwide hysteria in 1998, when a study of a dozen children in the United Kingdom suggested their autism had links to their being immunised with the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in babyhood.

Never mind that six years later, 10 of the study's 13 authors withdrew the hypothesis and declared there was no evidence-based link between the needle and autism or other developmental disorders.

The notion that the measles vaccine could hurt children took hold. It spread like a disease. It nestled particularly in nature-loving communities.

And the result of such misguided fear is seen in this week's avoidable drama at Beerwah High. Those children whose parents chose not to have them vaccinated in the wake of the UK report in 1998 are now of high school age, and so the disease gets a chance to live again.

Measles is not just making a re-emergence here. An increase in the number of cases from 2007 to 2008 in Austria, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Israel is causing concern. The World Health Organisation said on Tuesday that children in affluent countries were at greater risk of measles infection because of scepticism about immunisation and the belief that the disease was not serious.

The more educated and wealthy people are, the more ignorantly they behave in certain health matters, it seems.

Measles is not just a little rash or a little sniffle: it kills, it debilitates, it causes serious brain and lung infections.

Warning shots have been fired and the consequences of ignoring them are clear; communities must embrace the national immunisation program schedule or the weak and exposed among us face severe illness or death from diseases such as measles.
Such a dreadful outcome is easily, if not painlessly, avoidable.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

You can see a pattern in all these willfully uninformed parents, prepared to treat others as paraiahs... they all use the same catch-crys.

I'd say the Leasks and Offit's of the world have an identical check sheet, which they provide to any pen pushing pawn, and tell them to go spurt verbal abuse at anyone who thinks differently to them.

funny how they all trot out the same lines, huh?

Perhaps they will say, that's because those are the only lines to say...

[Sakura]

I'd say the Leasks and Offit's of the world have an identical check sheet, which they provide to any pen pushing pawn, and tell them to go spurt verbal abuse at anyone who thinks differently to them.

Yes, it's sanctioned verbal abuse/emotional manipulation.

It must be going badly for them if they have to stoop to that.

[cartersmom]

http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/mar/07/measles-mum-says-its-only-natural/

Measles mum calls for less panic

12:00a.m. 7th March 2009
| By Janine Hill (http://www.thedaily.com.au/staff/janine-hill/contact/)


(http://www.thedaily.com.au/polls/2009/mar/child-immunisation-poll/results/)

The mother of two Beerwah school children diagnosed with measles has queried Queensland Health’s “panic mode” reaction to the outbreak of the illness.
The number of confirmed cases of measles climbed to 13 yesterday as Queensland Health factored in three cases which occurred in early February but had only just been reported, according to a departmental spokesperson.
Twelve of the confirmed cases are Beerwah High students and the other a Beerwah primary student. Six cases, including two at the high school, remain under investigation, and a Caloundra student tested for measles has been cleared.
The Beerwah mother, who asked not to be named to protect the identities of her children, said her son and daughter, aged seven and 17, became sick in the first week of the school year.
Her daughter was initially told by a doctor that she had a 24 hour virus and initial tests on her son at Caloundra Hospital showed that he did not have measles but a second round of tests on both children confirmed they had the illness.
She kept both children home from school prior to their diagnosis because they were simply too sick to go, although the teenage girl did venture to school one day to collect a jumper.
The mother, who has doubts about the diagnosis because of the inconsistent test results and varying symptoms, said none of the other six people in her household, including another child, had become ill, leaving her sceptical about the contagiousness of the illness
And she could not understand why the primary school had not been put through the same rigorous vaccination scanning program as the high school if the illness was as contagious as health authorities have claimed.
“It looks like it’s been panic mode to me,” she said.
“I think they’ve gone into a bit of a mania about it.”
Queensland Health defended its decision not to apply the same screening process to Beerwah primary, saying that the child had not attended school while infectious.
The mother is also angry that another of her children was vaccinated without her permission during the scanning program at the high school.
“To me, that’s illegal. I’ll be asking some questions about it,” she said.
The woman, who is studying naturopathy and homeopathy, said she had “no regrets whatsoever” about her decision to cease vaccinating her children after her daughter suffered an adverse reaction to a triple antigen vaccination at 12 months which left her with a permanent disability.
She said both children had been homoeopathically immunised.
She said the children had experienced different symptoms. Both had temperatures in the vicinity of 40 degrees but her son experienced vomiting, coughing, a runny noise and a heat like rash almost immediately, while her daughter felt ill for some days, without vomiting or a runny nose, prior to the appearance of what appeared to be a heat rash.
She treated their illness with vitamins C, A and Echinacea and they have since returned to school.
She is yet unsure how her children contracted the illness.
A Queensland Health spokesperson said one of the cases had been infected while overseas some time ago, but the mother said her family had neither travelled nor been in contact with anyone who had recently been overseas.

[cartersmom]

http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2009/mar/08/parents-urged-vaccination-check-measles-records/

Parents urged to check measles records

12:00a.m. 8th March 2009

http://media.thedaily.com.au/img/photos/2009/03/05/Vaccination_500x500_t350.jpg
Parents of every Sunshine Coast student will be sent a letter urging them to check their children’s measles vaccination records as experts warn the risk of infection is still high in the wake of last week’s outbreak at Beerwah.
As Queensland Health officials confirmed the number of confirmed cases associated with the Beerwah High scare had reached 13, the Director-General of the Department of Education Rachel Hunter and chief health officer with Qld Health, Dr Jeannette Young, announced that thousands of warning letters would be sent out to families from every state and non-state school in the region.
“We are taking this measure as Queensland Health advises there is a significant risk of further infection in those who have not been vaccinated or only partly vaccinated,” Mrs Hunter said.
“I would ask parents to review their child’s vaccination records and ensure they have written evidence of the two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccination.
“Having the vaccination record will minimise the disruption to their child’s education.”
Dr Young said if any other schools were at the centre of a future measles outbreak, any student who did not have evidence of two doses of vaccine would be required to stay away from school until the MMR vaccine had been given.
Those with records of one dose of MMR vaccine could go back to school immediately after receiving their second shot but those with no record of having any doses of vaccine would be required to stay away from school for two weeks after the MMR vaccine had been given or two weeks after the onset of a rash in the last case of measles at their school.
Sunshine Coast Population Health Unit Public Health Physician Dr Andrew Langley said the confirmed number of cases at Beerwah had increased to 13 after the receipt of laboratory results late Friday.
All of the newly-confirmed cases were previously suspected cases and three involved students who were ill several weeks ago but were only reported it last week.
“A further two cases that have now been included as confirmed cases occurred in early February but appear to be linked to the current outbreak at Beerwah State High School,” Dr Langley said.
“This follows genetic testing of the measles strain this week.
“One of these earlier cases was infected with measles while overseas.”
Twelve of the confirmed cases were students at Beerwah State High School while the other is a family member of one of the students.
Dr Langley said the number of people with measles-like symptoms now being investigated on the Sunshine Coast had fallen to six – two of them Beerwah State High School students.

[Dozytoes]

This subject was not surprisingly well discussed on the AVN list, and it was mentioned that there had been a vaccination clinic for Hep B and HPV a fortnight before the outbreak of "measles" at Beerwah.

Coincidence?

Sue

[kellarni]

Measles

• Measles is a highly infectious virus spread by droplets that cause fever, a cough and a rash.

• One in 25 children who contract measles develop pneumonia and one in 2000 develop encephalitis (brain inflammation).

• For every 10 children who develop measles encephalitis, one will die and four will have permanent brain damage.

• About one in 25,000 will develop brain degeneration, which is always fatal.

Would it be really rude of me to ask for a source for these stats?
For my own arguments :)

[Dozytoes]

Would it be really rude of me to ask for a source for these stats?
For my own arguments :)

Not rude at all! :) The source of those statistics was the Daily.com.au website from where Hilary posted the article (post one in this thread). I for one would love to know where they concocted them!! :giggle:

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

perhaps someone should ask them where they found that lot.

[kellarni]

Thank you.