Large Measles Outbreak in a Religious Community in British Columbia

Large ongoing measles outbreak in a religious community in the Netherlands since May 2013.

Despite vaccination coverage over 95%, a measles outbreak started in May 2013 in the Netherlands. As of 28 August, there were 1,226 reported cases, including 82 hospitalisations. It is anticipated that the outbreak will continue. Most cases were orthodox Protestants (n=1,087/1,186; 91.7%) and unvaccinated (n=1,174/1,217; 96.5%). A unique outbreak control intervention was implemented: a personal...

Case of vaccine-associated measles five weeks post-immunisation, British Columbia, Canada, October 2013.

We describe a case of vaccine-associated measles in a two-year-old patient from British Columbia, Canada, in October 2013, who received her first dose of measles-containing vaccine 37 days prior to onset of prodromal symptoms. Identification of this delayed vaccine-associated case occurred in the context of an outbreak investigation of a measles cluster.

Epidemiology of measles outbreak in British Columbia--February 1997.

On 28 January 1997, three clinical cases of measles among students attending Simon Fraser University (SFU) were reported to the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. These cases were subsequently confirmed by the presence of measles-specific IgM on acute serology. Because several more clinical and suspect cases had been identified by the following day, a decision was made to offer measle...

Ebola Treatment and Prevention are not the only Battles: Understanding Ebola-related Fear and Stigma

Time to Shift from Systems Thinking-Talking to Systems Thinking-Action; Comment on “Constraints to Applying Systems Thinking Concepts in Health Systems: A Regional Perspective from Surveying Stakeholders in Eastern Mediterranean Countries”

A recent International Journal of Health Policy and Management (IJHPM) article by Fadi El-Jardali and colleagues makes an important contribution to the literature on health system strengthening by reporting on a survey of healthcare stakeholders in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) about Systems Thinking (ST). The study’s main contributions are its confirmation that healthcare stakeholde...