My brother, who is six years older than I am, has a scar where his smallpox vaccine was administered when he was a child. I do not have this same scar because smallpox had been eliminated from the United States by the time I was born and would be declared eradicated from the planet within a decade. As a person who loves vaccines, I love that I never had to be vaccinated against smallpox because the whole world was able to pull together to end the disease altogether.
Even though measles has been eliminated from the Americas, my children have all had their multiple doses of the MMR vaccine, and my grandchildren will likely also need to be vaccinated, so I was surprised to learn that it is possible to eradicate measles as well.
So what will it take? Nathan and I invited Dr. Manisha Patel and Dr. Mark Papania from the CDC to our podcast to talk us through domestic elimination and global eradication of measles. We can do this! Give our latest Vax Talk episode a listen to learn more!
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