Outbreak of Measles in U.S. Due to Lack of Vaccination and International Travel
PAUL: So, I don't know if you're aware of this, but measles cases in the U.S. are at a 20-year high right now. The virus is highly contagious and it usually causes really only a fever and rash, if you're lucky.</s>BLACKWELL: Yeah, but however it can lead to pneumonia, brain damage, deafness and in some rare cases, death. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has details for us this morning. Elizabeth?</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor, Christi, yes, we broke a record and it's not a good one. We have reached a 20-year high for measles cases. 288 cases so far this year, and that's the most we've had since 1994. Now there's really, you know, several reasons behind this, but here's the big one. People are not vaccinating their children. And then what happens is those kids get measles and then they spread it to other people. Now, we're seeing that this is the worst in the state of Ohio, and then there's no mystery there. What happened was that some folks from the Amish community went to go do volunteer work in the Philippines. Well, a lot of people in that community, in the Amish community, don't believe in vaccination, and the measles unfortunately is quite common in the Philippines. So you have unvaccinated people going to a country that has a lot of measles. Well, that spells trouble. Of course, those folks came back to the United States, and they were infected, and they got other people sick, and as you can see from this map, there are outbreaks in 17 other states as well. So you might wonder, well, I vaccinate my family. Am I OK? Well, there's a little bit of an issue here. Babies don't get vaccinated until they are about one year-old. You can't vaccinate them when they're little teeny, tiny babies. So you may fully intend to vaccinate your child when your doctor says do it at the age of one, but your child is going to be vulnerable for a year to somebody who comes in with the measles. So that's a problem also. Not all adults are fully immunized and they might not necessarily even know it. So, this is a problem even for those of us who do the right thing and vaccinate our children. Victor, Christi?</s>BLACKWELL: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you very much.</s>PAUL: So, I tell you, too, about this new drug that's giving some women hope of having a baby after they have cancer treatments. It's called Goserelin. And it works by sort of putting your ovaries on pause while a woman is in chemotherapy. And then when the chemo wraps up, it kicks start your ovaries again. It's still very early, but results show that women who took the drug were more likely to have a child after chemo than those who did not.</s>BLACKWELL: The first lady takes one of her causes to the pages of the op-ed section. What Michelle Obama is fighting for, and what it might mean for her legacy. (</s>BV) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yannick Noah achieved the pinnacle of French tennis. He became the first Frenchman to win the Roland Garros singles title in 37 years and the feat has yet to be repeated. (on camera): If I was in Leon, Paris, wherever, and I went up to a 15-year old boy or girl, 16-year-old, and I say, Yannick Noah, what does he do? What would he say? He say, he was a tennis player, and now he is a rock star.</s>YANNICK NOAH: No, they have no idea. Most of them have no idea that I was a tennis player. Nobody took -- I stopped in 1990, it was like 23 years ago. You know, that's a long time. I've had the best moments of my life, more than 30 years ago. It's right here in my heart forever. Every time I see it, every time I -- think about it -- I'm complete.