Pa’s Measles Outbreak Claims a Fourth Life

The Pennsylvania Department of Health confirmed Sept. 15 that an 18-year-old in Mifflin County had died of measles-associated complications. Mifflin County Coroner Andrea Alcalde identified the specific cause as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare but serious measles complication. The teen was unvaccinated. It's the fourth measles-associated death in Pennsylvania this year, part of an outbreak that stood at 693 cases across 38 counties and 133 hospitalizations as of the Department's Sept. 14 count.

The first two deaths this year were infants in Lancaster County, reported in August. The third was a 40-year-old woman in Jefferson County, in north central Pennsylvania, who died Sept. 12 according to Coroner Greg Furlong. The Mifflin County teen, in central Pennsylvania, is the fourth. Both counties sit hundreds of miles from Monroe, and no local case has been confirmed.

The number of deaths is no longer in dispute, but what to call them still is. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned whether measles was truly the cause of the earlier Lancaster County infant deaths, pointing to a coroner's finding that one infant died of a ruptured spleen with measles merely present. State health officials say “measles-associated” is a surveillance term, not a cause of death finding, a distinction that's kept Kennedy and Gov. Josh Shapiro sparring since late August.

Frankly, the dispute over terms seems petty; this is a preventable disease and everybody should be working together to stop the spread before it hits our corner of the state.