82-year-old measles patient dies in Jerusalem

An 82-year-old woman died Wednesday after being admitted to Hadassah Hospital Ein Karem with measles earlier this month.

The Health Ministry noted that the woman also suffered from a severe hematologic disease.

As of Wednesday, 2,690 Israelis were being treated for measles, with October marking the peak month, in which 948 people were hospitalized. There was a small drop in November to 893 patients, and there have been 194 Israeli hospitalized so far in December.

The disease has been making a major comeback in Israel amid a decline in some communities of parents vaccinating their children.

Infections have mostly centered on the country’s ultra-Orthodox community, where inoculation rates have generally been low. In November, an 18-month-old toddler in Jerusalem died of the disease, the first recorded death from measles in Israel in the past 15 years.

Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces announced that several hundred soldiers at the army’s Kirya headquarters base in Tel Aviv were at risk of carrying the virus. The military was working to contact the soldiers, who were all in the vicinity of a female soldier who arrived at the Kirya’s medical clinic with measles symptoms last week.

Last Wednesday a 16-month-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition suffering from meningitis and pneumonia as the result of a measles infection. The toddler was being treated at the pediatric intensive care unit at the Emek Medical Center in northern Israel.

Authorities were checking if the girl, who is from an ultra-Orthodox family, may have contracted the disease during a visit to relatives in Jerusalem. According to news reports, the girl was not immunized.