MMR Victory: Deadly Rubella Officially Wiped Out in Americas

Smallpox is out, polio has gone and now it's rubella's turn. Vaccines have wiped out all these monsters from America, according to forbes.

Following a 15-year-old vaccination campaign with the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine, the Pan American Health Organization and the World Health Organization declared it gone, unless someone is visiting another country or it gets "imported" into a North, Central or South American country.

Strangely, there have been many pockets of resistance to MMR. However, a study shows there there is no link between the MMR and "autism spectrum disorders". The main cause of autism, congenital rubella syndrome, can be prevented by the MMR vaccine.

Dr. Paul Offit, professor in the division of infectious diseases and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, says that people are not aware of the dangers posed by Rubella., according to usnews.  "It created a lot of anxiety with mothers," he says. "[The vaccine] was a breakthrough. Before that, there were 5,000 cases of miscarriages a year in the early 1960s and before."

Rubella is also known as German measles, a mild disease in children and young adults. But it threatens a pregnant woman, as the virus can cross the placenta to the fetus, increasing the risk for congenital rubella syndrome.

It can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth, but even those who survive may have "birth defects, heart problems, blindness, deafness, brain damage, bone and growth problems, intellectual disability or damage to the liver and spleen."

The MMR vaccine was developed by Dr. Maurice Hilleman with the Merck team in 1969, just a few years after a huge rubella outbreak in the US.

Hence, to claim that it has been eliminated, there should be no evidence of "endemic transmission" or one infected person transmitting it to another for at least three years. The Expert Committee for Measles and Rubella Elimination in the Americas last week found that no cases had occurred for five consecutive years, after a case in Argentina in 2009.

The review involved 165 million records and 1.3 million checks in communities, reported The New York Times.