The child dies because of the measles epidemic, marking the first US death in a decade

A child in West Texas died of measles, state health officials said on Wednesday, the first American death from the extremely contagious disease in a decade.
It comes after an outburst in Texas, grew up from a handful of more than 130 in two states.

The child, who was not vaccinated against the disease, died overnight in a children’s hospital, the Texas Health Department said in a statement.

“We had so many kids coming and then we obviously weren’t prepared, probably so early in what we see death,” said Amy Thompson, chief executive of Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock, where the child was dying for her.

During a meeting of the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy JR, a vaccine critic who confirmed As Minister of Health and Human Services earlier this month, he said that two people had died in the Texas epidemic. The Ministry of Health and Human Services later corrected Kennedy, confirming a death.

At least 124 people were known to have been infected in West Texas since early February, all of them except five of them are not vaccinated and most of them, Texas health officials said.

In addition, nine cases were announced on Tuesday in Eastern New Mexico, near the Texas state line, where the epidemic has spread to about 10 counties, Texas health officials said.

Patients have had symptoms such as high fever, red watery eyes, nasal congestion, cough and rash on the face, said Lara Johnson, a head physician at Lubbock Hospital. Children have been treated with complementary oxygen and high -flow oxygen, high fever and IV liquids, he said.

The health section of New Mexico warned that “because measles is so contagious, additional cases are likely to occur”.

The US mortality rate from measles, which spreads through the air from cough or sneezing droplets, is 1 to 3 deaths from every 1,000 cases mentioned, according to US control and prevention centers. The last death of measles was in 2015, according to the CDC.

A Texas Ministry spokesman was not available in Reuters for comments, but the organization said in a press release that 18 people were hospitalized with the disease. The CDC and the Ministry of Health and Human Services did not respond to comments.

Kennedy was appointed to lead HHS after surpassing the resistance from the Medical Foundation and some members of Congress and has committed to protecting existing vaccination programs. Last week, he told workers in the organization that he was planning to investigate, among other things, from the childhood vaccination program.

‘A bad illness’

Lara Anton, a spokesman for the Texas Health Department, told a local subsidiary ABC that the ongoing epidemic had mainly affected young children and adolescents and that cases were initially concentrated in a “close, under-under-inflicted” rural community of Mennonite in the Gaines Country.

“It’s all a personal choice and you can do whatever you want.

At the moment, it is not clear how the first person was exposed and there is no indication that the first patients traveled outside the United States, Anton said in many media.

“This will be accelerated for a while,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, director of the Vaccine Development Center at Baylor University, Waco, Texas and a frequent target of the vaccine campaign.

“It’s a bad illness,” he said, noting that about 20 % of cases are hospitalized. “Unfortunately, Texas is its focus because of our very aggressive anti-vaccination,” he said.

Irasa was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, which means that there was no continuous transmission of the disease for one year.

In recent years, federal health officials have attributed some outbreaks For parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, Reuters has previously mentioned.

In 2024, there were 285 cases of disease in the US from 16 outbreaks, from 59 cases from four outbreaks in 2023.

Texas health officials announced on Monday that more people were probably exposed to the virus after a contagious resident of Gaines County traveled to various locations in and around San Antonio, about 400 miles (644 km) away.

The city of Lubbock promoted the measles-rubella-rolling vaccine for non-vaccinated children on its website and in free clinics, which began on Tuesday.