Hamilton's associate medical health officer said Friday. They also said that they would not give any more information out of respect for the kid and their family.
Canada's first measles death in over ten years was a young child from Hamilton who had not been protected.
Hamilton Public Health Services stated on Friday that the highly contagious virus killed a child younger than five years old, but they did not give any other details.
A young kid who had their whole life ahead of them has died too soon. This is a deeply sad case, said Dr. Brendan Lew, the deputy medical officer of health for Hamilton, in a statement on Friday. "There have been six confirmed cases of measles in Hamilton so far in 2024. None of the people who have had the disease have ever had a measles vaccine."
"Out of respect for the child and their family's privacy, we will not be going into more specifics about this case."
The province's most recent measles monitoring report, which came out on Thursday, said that 22 proven cases of measles have been found in Ontario this year. Thirteen of them were in children, and 12 of them had not been vaccinated against measles. The state of the other vaccine was unknown. Five kids younger than nine, including the dead child, were hospitalized with measles. None of them had been vaccinated.
Ontario has had 14 cases of measles so far in 2024, which is twice as many as all of last year.
Ontario Public Health said in a statement on Friday that until this reported death, the province had not seen a death from an acute measles sickness since 1989. In Ontario's public health database, that's the most recent info.
"It's sad to hear that a child in Ontario died from measles, but it's important to remember that the best way to avoid getting measles is to get two doses of a vaccine that contains measles," the statement said.
Canada has mostly gotten rid of measles thanks to regular vaccine efforts. But this year there are more cases in the country because of a surge in cases around the world and a drop in vaccine rates. After five months, the Star has found at least 76 cases in Canada. That's more than six times the number of cases found in all of last year.
As of February, more than a third of school-aged kids in Hamilton did not have up-to-date vaccination records. This led the city's public health department to start a new campaign to get kids vaccinated. They had until the first week of March to update those records, or their kids could be kicked out of school.
Computers in the City of Hamilton were hacked on February 25. That push was put on hold on March 1. The reason for this was that the public health department couldn't get to its collection of virus information. Public health did not know right away what was going on with the vaccine programme on Friday.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the family who lost a child. A spokeswoman for Minister of Health Sylvia Jones said in a statement on Friday, "Our thoughts are with them as they go through this difficult time."
"We want to remind everyone in Ontario to get their shots on time to protect themselves and their families from getting contagious diseases." If you don't know if everyone in your family has all of their shots, you should contact your neighborhood public health unit or primary care provider.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also told parents to talk to their doctors about getting their kids vaccinated against common childhood illnesses.
Trudeau told reporters in Winnipeg on Friday that there have been too many cases of diseases that can be stopped in children in the past few years. For ten years, people in North America and around the world have become less willing to get vaccinated.
Trudeau said, "My best advice to all families is to listen to your doctors and talk to your doctors about what vaccinations are right for their kids. Make sure you're doing everything you can to keep your kids safe and healthy."
"No one wants to see this tragedy." I can't picture what that family is going through now. I know that as a mom, everyone wants the best for their children.
The child's death should be a wake-up call, said Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
It makes the point again that measles is a very dangerous illness that can have effects that last a lifetime. "And it can kill you," she said on Friday.
