Talk:Measles eradication

Should we have an article?

I think it might be a good idea to start an article now. The information is currently split into at least three articles:

• measles
• eradication of infectious diseases
• MMR vaccine

Assuming Pakistan and Nigeria become or remain stable enough to vaccinate there, measles is quite likely to lose access to a reservoir of non-immune children in 2011: while there will be many areas without herd immunity, the disease requires they be connected in just the right way to remain endemic, rather than be a series of small-scale outbreaks.

It's quite possible that that's pessimistic, and measles will just go away on its own as soon as the Indian subcontinent is no longer available as an essentially un-immunised reservoir.

That's speculation, of course, but an event that has a 10% chance of being so significant should probably have an article before it happens.

RandomP (talk) 15:31, 28 February 2009 (UTC)