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Austrian Measles Cases Tied to Swiss School Visitor (Update2)
By Simeon Bennett
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- A Swiss pupil who attends a school that doesn't promote vaccinating children may have sparked the measles outbreak that sickened more than 250 people during a visit to Austria, a study showed.
Researchers tracking the spread of the viral disease to four Austrian provinces as well as Germany and Norway found that about four in five cases were linked to a school in Salzburg, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in its weekly online journal Eurosurveillance.
The source of the outbreak may have been a student who visited the school from one in Switzerland that applies the same philosophy of education a week before the first cases were detected in March, the authors, from the Vienna-based Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, said. Health officials are struggling to contain a wider measles outbreak, which has afflicted more than 1,300 people in Europe so far this year, jeopardizing a World Health Organization goal of eliminating the disease from the region by 2010.
The two schools are based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, who promoted a form of alternative medicine. The principles behind the Waldorf schools emphasize ``nature-based therapies that support the body's innate healing wisdom,'' the researchers wrote.
Austrian health authorities closed the Salzburg school for a week following the outbreak and offered free vaccinations to students younger than 15 years old, the authors said.
Highly Contagious
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease that causes flu-like symptoms and a skin rash covering the entire body. It spreads as patients sneeze and cough, and 90 percent of people in close contact with those infected are likely to contract it if not vaccinated, according to the Mayo Clinic, a U.S. health-care provider. Measles can cause pneumonia, blindness and death in severe cases.
About 87 percent of the 3,826 measles cases registered in Europe last year occurred in people who hadn't been vaccinated, according to a separate Eurosurveillance report. There were no deaths reported. Switzerland had the highest incidence, with more than 14 people in every 100,000 infected in 2007.
Few European countries have inoculated 95 percent of their population, the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks and eliminate the disease, the ECDC said last week.
Routine childhood vaccination against measles was introduced in most European countries in the 1980s, according to the agency.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 18, 2008 06:31 EDT
Austrian Measles Cases Tied to Swiss School Visitor (Update2)
By Simeon Bennett
April 18 (Bloomberg) -- A Swiss pupil who attends a school that doesn't promote vaccinating children may have sparked the measles outbreak that sickened more than 250 people during a visit to Austria, a study showed.
Researchers tracking the spread of the viral disease to four Austrian provinces as well as Germany and Norway found that about four in five cases were linked to a school in Salzburg, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said in its weekly online journal Eurosurveillance.
The source of the outbreak may have been a student who visited the school from one in Switzerland that applies the same philosophy of education a week before the first cases were detected in March, the authors, from the Vienna-based Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, said. Health officials are struggling to contain a wider measles outbreak, which has afflicted more than 1,300 people in Europe so far this year, jeopardizing a World Health Organization goal of eliminating the disease from the region by 2010.
The two schools are based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, who promoted a form of alternative medicine. The principles behind the Waldorf schools emphasize ``nature-based therapies that support the body's innate healing wisdom,'' the researchers wrote.
Austrian health authorities closed the Salzburg school for a week following the outbreak and offered free vaccinations to students younger than 15 years old, the authors said.
Highly Contagious
Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease that causes flu-like symptoms and a skin rash covering the entire body. It spreads as patients sneeze and cough, and 90 percent of people in close contact with those infected are likely to contract it if not vaccinated, according to the Mayo Clinic, a U.S. health-care provider. Measles can cause pneumonia, blindness and death in severe cases.
About 87 percent of the 3,826 measles cases registered in Europe last year occurred in people who hadn't been vaccinated, according to a separate Eurosurveillance report. There were no deaths reported. Switzerland had the highest incidence, with more than 14 people in every 100,000 infected in 2007.
Few European countries have inoculated 95 percent of their population, the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks and eliminate the disease, the ECDC said last week.
Routine childhood vaccination against measles was introduced in most European countries in the 1980s, according to the agency.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: April 18, 2008 06:31 EDT