Rebecca Archer lovingly places a pair of small glasses on a shelf filled with memorabilia like trinkets and photos. They belonged to her 10-year-old daughter, Renae, who suddenly died after a measles infection.
“She was just really intelligent. Just a really happy child, always smiling,” she remembers.
Renae was just five months old when she got the measles – too young to be vaccinated, but unable to avoid being exposed during an outbreak in Manchester, England, in 2013. The infant was hospitalized, but recovered. For the next 10 years, Renae had no other medical issues, her mom says. But the measles virus was sitting dormant in her brain for years. When it woke up, Renae started having seizures. Then, she couldn’t speak, or eat, or even stay conscious.
“The fact that it was measles, I just couldn’t get my head around it,” Archer said.
With measles cases on the rise in Canada at rates unseen in almost three decades — and vaccination coverage for childhood vaccines like the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot falling since the pandemic — Archer and others who have suffered from measles complications are pleading that those who can get vaccinated do.
Read more via CBC News.
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