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Younger Doctors Get Crash Course on Measles

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Dr. Greg Moran gives an informal workshop on measles for residents in the ER at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar. Most residents have never seen measles before. (Maya Sugarman/KPCC)

As public health officials have been working to curb the measles outbreak that began last month at Disneyland, they have run into an unexpected challenge: Because measles was all but eliminated in the United States about 15 years ago, most younger physicians have never seen it.

So now a generation of doctors is getting a crash course via a combination of methods, including informal workshops, emails, fliers and old college textbooks.

On a recent morning, Dr. Greg Moran, interim chief of emergency medicine at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar, gave a quick seminar to a handful of residents, interns and other doctors during their daily huddle in the ER.

"Probably most of you young whippersnappers here have never seen a case of measles," he says, going on to explain when a rash might appear on a person with measles.

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In fact, none of the students in the ad hoc workshop had ever seen a case. Before the development of a vaccine in the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of Americans got measles, and about 500 kids died every year, says Moran.

Read the full story via KPCC

 

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