Measles One More Time

Abstract

Although measles vaccine has been licensed for more than a quarter of a century, we have failed to eradicate the disease. It appeared as though we might be approaching this goal in 1983 when only 1497 cases were reported. In 1989, however, we had approximately 17 000 cases. Prior to this there were a series of "miniepidemics" in 1971, 1976, and 1986, occurring at increasing intervals each with fewer cases than the previous one (Fig 1).¹ The epidemic of 1989 was a clear departure from this pattern. One of the responses was to recommend a routine two-dose schedule of measles vaccine.