Toddler hospitalized in critical condition after measles infection

A 16-month-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition on Wednesday, 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.

Israel has been battling a rash of measles infections that has 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.

Authorities were checking Wednesday 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.

The lower vaccination rates in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods have been attributed to a faulty perception that fervently religious Jews are protected from infection by the insulated nature of their communities, as well as discredited rumors that the life-saving practice is dangerous.

The outbreak of measles in Israel has been blamed for infections in the religious Jewish communities of New York and London, which are thought to have started when unvaccinated residents visited Israel, contracted the disease there and brought it back to the community.

Concerns about the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine surfaced in 1998, when a British study, since discredited, linked it with autism. The study was found to be a fraud and the autism link was debunked, but vaccination rates have dropped in some countries and communities, as concerned parents have prevented children receiving their shots.

With more than 2,000 Israelis contracting the disease this year, senior officials in several hospitals have accused the Health Ministry of failing to contain the measles epidemic, saying it was “unreasonable” to expect them to locate all the people who have been in contact with each patient and calling for a nationwide vaccination campaign to immunize the entire population, the Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported.

They also said there aren’t enough isolation rooms for all the measles patients, the paper reported.

The Health Ministry responded to the report by blaming the hospitals for the lack of isolation rooms and for failing to adequately vaccinate their employees.

Knesset members last month unanimously advanced a bill that would give Israeli authorities the power to sanction parents who do not vaccinate their children and to ban entry to all educational institutions, including kindergartens, for any child or person who has not been vaccinated against a disease when there is a national concern over an outbreak of the illness.

The law, if authorized in full, would allow the Health Ministry to follow up with children who do not get vaccinations at state-run well-baby clinics and send their parents an official warning if they continue to refuse. Ministry officials could then decide to apply financial sanctions in an effort to push them to agree to vaccinate.

The sanctions would take the form of reduced tax credits and welfare benefits that could add up to a loss of no more than NIS 2,000 (approximately $530) per month.

According to Prof. Shai Ashkenazi, director of the Israeli Pediatric Society, measles “was on the cusp of extinction, but, because of a decline in vaccination, has made a big comeback. In Europe, too, in the first half of 2018, there were more than 41,000 incidents of infection with at least 37 deaths.”