A child under five years old has died of measles in Ontario, according to the province’s public health agency, the first such death in more than a decade.
In a report published Thursday, Public Health Ontario said the child was not vaccinated against the highly infectious respiratory virus. It did not indicate when or where the child died, or their age.
The report shows there were no other measles-related deaths recorded in the province between Jan. 1, 2013 and this week.
Measles has been on the rise in both Ontario and elsewhere in Canada as cases increase globally, particularly in Europe, which has seen tens of thousands of infections over the last year.
In Ontario, MMR is at 12 months and varicella (chickenpox) is separate at 15 months.
Other provinces, territories and states in Canada/US have variations and some include MMRV instead of MMR followed by Varicella.
MMRV is scheduled routinely at age 4-6.
An overview of the routine childhood schedule can be seen here.
The full ontario schedule can be found here, with the routine childhood schedule being on page 3.
By the way for anyone wondering why bother vaccinate against chickenpox, it’s because chickenpox and shingles are the same thing. If you never get chickenpox you never get shingles. Shingles fucking sucks and causes blindness, untreatable pain and other miseries.
Also chicken pox sucks. If they made a vaccine for hand, foot, and mouth, I’d get my kids vaccinated and that’s mild compared to chicken pox.