'Authorities should push for all kids to get measles shot'

Doctors trying to contain last spring's haredi measles outbreak disagreed Wednesday on what should have been done to prevent the spread of the disease.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Doctors involved in trying to contain the haredi measles outbreak that ended last spring disagreed Wednesday on what should have been done to prevent the spread of the disease. But participants in a conference of 200 primary and urgent care physicians at the Jerusalem International Convention Center tended to agree that those elements in the haredi community who avoid vaccinations must be encouraged to get their children immunized. Several hundred people all over the country were infected with the measles during the outbreak, and a nine-year-old girl nearly died. Dr. Ian Miskin, an infectious disease expert at Clalit Health Services, told the conference that the Health Ministry "did all it could" to slow the spread of the virus, even though he's "not a big fan" of the ministry. He said "pockets of the haredi community" who do not believe in getting vaccinated were largely responsible for the outbreak, in which 15 percent of the victims were hospitalized and saved from complications including encephalitis. One girl needed a special procedure that saved her from death, he said. Miskin said the health funds did not act speedily enough to vaccinate their medical personnel against the measles so they would not be infected or infect others. Dr. Brendon Stewart-Freedman, the alert director of TEREM's Tayelet branch in the Arnona neighborhood, was the first to diagnose the measles victim who apparently started the outbreak - a British Satmar hassid who infected others at a wedding attended by thousands. The man had come to Stewart-Freedman's clinic feeling unwell. The family physician used the Internet to see if there had been a measles outbreak in the northeast London neighborhood where the hassid came from and, on the basis of partial symptoms, informed the ministry that his patient had measles. "The ministry may have had difficulty finding the key rabbinical leaders and organizers," the TEREM physician told The Jerusalem Post. "If such a case happened again, I personally would not have been satisfied merely with diagnosing the patient, but would have gone to look for the Satmar gabbai (beadle) who organized the wedding so everyone who needed vaccination would have been contacted - even though that should have been the job of the ministry. I never knew a hassidic wedding has a gabbai." Stewart-Freedman also maintained that Miskin did not present enough evidence in his lecture to back up all his claims. Parts of the haredi community, Stewart-Freedman said, are very closed, do not recognize state authority and wrongly believe that getting measles naturally, by infection from other children, is preferable to vaccination. In the last measles outbreak in the haredi community in 1990, a ministry official actually disguised himself as a haredi and went to an enclave with a loudspeaker to call on followers to get unprotected children vaccinated. Miskin said that media reports emanating from the United Kingdom that linked mumps, measles and rubella vaccination to autism have been proven false.