How Polk County health officials plan to defend against measles
DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa HHS announced Wednesday that a third case of measles has been detected in Iowa.
Closer to home, Juliann Van Liew, the director of the Polk County Health Department, said the department has been preparing for a measles outbreak for months.
'Internally, we're really in good shape. We have some really phenomenal communicable disease nurses who can do this work really well. And the team is really in sync. We've been preparing internally for months, but also externally. We have protocol that are also ready to go in place. We've been meeting the Des Moines Health Care Coalition since March on measles and routinely bring them together for updates to make sure that all of our health care facilities and health care providers in the Metro feel comfortable knowing what protocol they should have in place within their own systems,' Van Liew said.
Van Liew said that if a measles case is detected in Polk County, the department is ready to respond.
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'When we do identify a case of something like measles that is as rare as it typically is, we go into a different mode of response. And so we activate what's called that structure, which means that as a health department, we're no longer just pulling in staff who directly manage the case. We're pulling in a lot more of us. So we're making sure that as a full team, we're ready to respond. And to scale up our response if, for some reason, we would end up in a true outbreak situation,' Van Liew said.
Dr. Joel Waddell, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at UnityPoint Health Blank Children's Hospital, said the MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent measles.
'Measles is extremely contagious. It's the most contagious infection out there, but it is very, very preventable. So the vaccine that's available, the MMR, is extremely effective at preventing measles. So with routine vaccination in childhood that provides protection against measles infection for around 97% of people, which is extremely, extremely good,' Dr. Waddell said.
The Polk County Health Department is providing free MMR vaccines. To receive a free vaccine visit the Polk County Health Department website and make an appointment.
Dr. Waddell said that some adults may need to get a MMR vaccine booster.
'If you think you might have received the measles vaccine between 1963 and 1967, try your best to find the documents, because during those years there were actually two measles vaccines available. One was the current one. We have the live or weakened vaccine, the weakened virus, I mean, and the other was an inactivated or killed virus vaccine. That one, the killed virus vaccine has been removed from circulation not for safety problems, but because it didn't work, it didn't protect you. And so if you got vaccinated during that time, you know, if you're out there and you're in your sixties and you don't know which vaccine you got, the current recommendations, and what I would recommend, would be to get at least one dose of the MMR to keep you protected,' Dr. Waddell said.
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