Public health experts are celebrating some good news this week: Rubella, a contagious virus that can cause serious health defects in unborn children, has been eliminated from the Americas. It’s the first region of the world that the World Health Organization has officially declared to be rubella-free.
A group of global health officials — including representatives from the Pan American Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Unicef, and the United Nations Foundation — made the announcement on Wednesday, hailing the elimination of rubella as a “historic achievement.”
“The fight against rubella has taken more than 15 years, but it has paid off with what I believe will be one of the most important Pan American public health achievements of the 21st century,” Dr. Carissa F. Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, said at the event.
Rubella, which is sometimes called the “German measles,” typically causes a mild fever and rash. But the consequences can be much more serious if pregnant women contract the disease. Each year, about 120,000 children around the world are born with severe birth defects stemming from rubella. Back in the 1960s, a severe rubella outbreak in the United States affected thousands of pregnancies and led to an estimated 20,000 babies born with defects like deafness, cataracts, liver damage, heart issues, and intellectual disabilities.
This week’s milestone is thanks to the availability of the shot that effectively protects against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). The development of modern vaccines has helped virtually eradicate several infectious diseases that used to be widespread. Indeed, the news about rubella comes on the heels of the Americas’ successful elimination of smallpox in 1971 and polio in 1994.
But here in the United States, the MMR shot has also found itself at the center of controversy that has plagued public health officials for the past decade. Thanks to a widely discredited study that incorrectly linked the MMR vaccine to a greater risk of autism, some U.S. parents have grown wary of giving their kids this particular vaccine. Despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, this myth about vaccines has been particularly persistent.
It’s rare for Americans to skip out on recommended vaccines altogether, but an increasing number of parents are choosing to delay the two doses of the MMR shot in a misguided attempt to protect their kids against autism. That’s had serious consequences: Specifically because of lower MMR vaccination rates among people who are skeptical about vaccine safety, measles has been able to spread more widely. (Since rubella is less contagious than measles, the small number of parents opting out of the MMR shot hasn’t had as big of an effect on rubella transmission.)
Just last week, the results from a massive study of autism rates among toddlers provided the latest proof that the MMR shot has absolutely no relationship with this particular disease. Scientists remain hopeful that the body of evidence about vaccines, which are considered to be one of the greatest public health advances of the 20th century, will ease skeptical parents’ concerns.
“Now, with rubella under our belt, we need to roll up our sleeves and finish the job of eliminating measles, as well,” Etienne noted during Wednesday’s event.