CDC: U.S. measles cases drop to the lowest number on record

ATLANTA (AP) _ The U.S. had just 37 cases of measles in 2004, the smallest number in more than 90 years of record-keeping, the government said Thursday. <br/><br/>Nearly all of the cases originated abroad,

Thursday, December 8th 2005, 12:31 pm

By: News On 6

ATLANTA (AP) _ The U.S. had just 37 cases of measles in 2004, the smallest number in more than 90 years of record-keeping, the government said Thursday.

Nearly all of the cases originated abroad, with 14 occurring in U.S. residents who traveled to other nations, 13 in foreigners who brought the disease to the United States, and six in people infected by those two groups.

``It's the success of the vaccination program,'' said Dr. Gustavo Dayan, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the decade before a measles vaccine became available in 1963, more than 500,000 measles cases and about 450 measles deaths occurred in the United States each year.

The U.S. vaccination rate against measles is now over 90 percent. Many of the 2004 cases could have been prevented if people had been properly immunized, Dayan said.