Five-year-old Shado is about to get vaccinated, sitting on his father's lap. "Take a deep breath... That's it, you're very brave," a nurse congratulates him.
Shado's father, Mark Medina, took his children to a health center in Lubbock, Texas, which had launched a vaccination campaign against measles, a serious and highly contagious disease that is making a comeback in the United States.
It was in this town in the northwest of the state that an unvaccinated child died after contracting the disease, authorities announced Wednesday, the first measles-related death in the country in nearly a decade.
After learning about it on Facebook, Mark Medina and his wife began to feel "a little scared." "We thought, 'OK, it's time to get vaccinated,'" the 31-year-old father told AFP.
"A population that traditionally does not vaccinate its children," says Rachel Dolan of the Lubbock Department of Public Health, who points out that "measles is very contagious, it's the most contagious virus we know."
A "small spark" was enough to cause "numerous cases and rapid spread in this population," she said.
– Electroshock –
Since the beginning of the year, 146 cases have been recorded in Texas, according to a new count on Friday, around ten in the neighboring state of New Mexico, and a handful elsewhere in the country.
In Texas, the country's second-most populous state, nearly 20 people were recently hospitalized. All were unvaccinated, according to authorities.
In this context, many experts are concerned about the influence that the new Secretary of Health, Robert Kennedy Jr., could have, as he has in the past relayed false information about vaccination, notably mentioning a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, a theory that has been repeatedly refuted.
The epidemic also broke out as more and more parents decided not to vaccinate their children, amid growing distrust of health authorities and pharmaceutical companies.
In Lubbock, however, the news of the death of an unvaccinated child seemed to come as a shock to parents of young children, as well as to unvaccinated adults.
"It's one of the reasons I came, to be safe," confirms José Luis Aguilar, a 57-year-old truck driver, encouraged by his boss to get vaccinated.
“As the epidemic grew, (…) we saw an increase in the number of people coming forward to get vaccinated,” says Rachel Dolan.
"Some people have realized the imminent threat and have decided to get vaccinated," she adds.
After two doses, the measles vaccine's efficacy is 97%, one of the highest rates among available vaccines, Dolan said.
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