Yesterday, the World Health Organization got together with the Pan American Health Organization to announce some promising news: the have been no new transmissions of the rubella virus in the entire western hemisphere since 2009. As a result, the virus has been declared eliminated in this region, joining smallpox and polio on that elite list.
Rubella, commonly called the German measles, doesn't cause severe symptoms in the vast majority of infected individuals. If a pregnant woman is infected, however, it can cause miscarriages or a suite of birth defects. Before the advent of an effective vaccine, the WHO says that up to 20,000 children a year in Latin America and the Caribbean were born with rubella-related birth defects; that's also the number that occurred during the last major outbreak in the US.
The widespread use of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) is partly to thank for the virus' elimination. Caribbean countries also used an adult vaccination program to help cut transmission in their populations. As a result, the last infection of a local origin occurred in 2009. Since then, several cases have been reported within the hemisphere, but all have traced back to infections overseas.
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