The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has declared that the Americas have been cleared of endemic cases of rubella, which is also known as German measles. It is the first region in the world to be declared of rubella, which can cause many types of birth defects and miscarriages in pregnant women.
Endemic cases of a disease are those that have not been brought in from outside, such as by a tourist. The last endemic case in the region was in 2009, but five years had to pass with no evidence of an endemic case before rubella could be considered eliminated.
The effort to eliminate rubella in the Americas took 15 years and involved widespread vaccination programs using the MMR (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine. Rubella is the third disease to be eliminated from the Americas. Smallpox was eliminated in 1971 and polio in 1994. All three diseases can be prevented by vaccines. Only smallpox has been eliminated globally.
In the United States, 20,000 infants were born with birth defects due to rubella during the last major outbreak in the 1960s.
"The elimination of rubella from the Americas is a historic achievement that reflects the collective will of our region's countries to work together to achieve ambitious public health milestones," Carissa F. Etienne, director of PAHO, said in a statement. "Ours was the first region to eradicate smallpox, the first to eliminate polio, and now the first to eliminate rubella. All four achievements prove the value of immunization and how important it is to make vaccines available even to the remotest corners of our hemisphere."
PAHO is the regional office of the World Health Organization. In addition to North and South America, its area includes the Caribbean.
The rubella virus causes a mild infection in children and adults, but if a pregnant woman becomes infected early in pregnancy, it can cause miscarriage or birth defects including blindness, deafness, brain damage, and heart defects.