It’s hard to keep up with Canada’s measles outbreak. Last month, the federal health database reported more than 1,500 cases across the country. More recent stats from Public Health Ontario counted more than 1,400 cases and 100 hospitalizations in Ontario alone. Of these, some 70 per cent are in Southwestern Ontario, 95 per cent of patients are unvaccinated and most all can be traced back to last fall, where a large Mennonite gathering in New Brunswick unknowingly became a superspreader event that’s still unfolding today.

Many people from the Mennonite community, if and when they decide to seek medical attention, come to St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital in St. Thomas, Ontario, about a half hour south of London. There, they’ll find chief of paediatrics Asmaa Hussain, leading her team through a measles outbreak she never thought she’d see in her lifetime in this part of the world. Declining vaccination rates have caused the return of the highly contagious disease: just 83 per cent of Canadian children have received the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, whereas herd immunity requires 95 per cent to prevent outbreaks. Here, Hussain describes what it’s like to manage measles on the ground, if she’s ever successfully swayed people to vaccinate, and whether the end is near.

St. Thomas Elgin General Hospital has been in the thick of a measles outbreak for a few months now. What’s it like in there?

Since the end of November, we’ve admitted 17 patients with measles, two adults and 15 children. They’ve been spread over multiple months, so we haven’t had a significant overload of patients, but those that we do have require a significant amount of care. Each patient needs their own special negative pressure room that ensures the infection doesn’t spread throughout the hospital. March had our highest number of admissions, with nine patients, and now we’re trending down. Hopefully we’re through the worst of it here, but I don’t know. Nobody does.

You’re in Elgin County, home to a sizable Mennonite community—many of whom remain........

© Macleans