It is a viral disease that only attacks humans and is transmitted through the respiratory tract. It is extremely contagious, since a person with measles can infect someone else even before symptoms appear. There is no treatment to attack, but it can be prevented by vaccination.
The vaccine applied to prevent this disease is called MMR (measles, rubella and intraparotid) and has an efficacy of 95%. However, the disease continues to appear, in those people who do not develop or do not maintain good immunity.
In this sense, the disease attacks about 30 million people in the world each year and causes the death of almost one million of them. Measles is the main vaccine-preventable disease.
It is noteworthy that currently there are many cases of children under 1 year of age with measles, a situation that puts the lives of babies, since they can develop serious complications. This is due to the fact that the administration of the vaccine in the breastfeeding period is not effective, that is why it must be placed after 12 months of age.
Measles is not only extremely dangerous for babies, but also for people who are in advanced age. The most frequent complications during the suffering of measles are due to the alterations suffered by the respiratory tract and the temporary immunocompromise suffered by these people, that is, their immune system weakens during the disease, giving way to secondary bacterial infections that can settle in the body.
Thus, a person with measles can also suffer from bacterial pneumonia, which is the main cause of deaths associated with measles. To a lesser extent, the person can suffer from bronchitis and otitis media and in very few cases water encephalitis can develop, which despite not being the most frequent, if it is the most serious, with a lethality that can reach 30% and for whom survives, leaves neurological sequelae.
Measles infection begins in the respiratory tract with an incubation period of nine to eleven days. Then, the prodromal period that lasts from three to six days is generated, characterized by presenting symptoms similar to those of the cold, such as general malaise, fever and lacrimation. Koplik's spots soon appear, which are small red plaques with white dots in the center, which are located on the mucosa of the mouth, at the level of the molars.
Later, the rash occurs, where a macular rash appears that begins behind the ears and spreads to the face, trunk and extremities, lasting three days, on the fourth day its color changes to brown and finally they peel off, culminating thus the clinical picture of the disease.
