[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[House]
[Page 1558]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE MEASLES OUTBREAK

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Today, Mr. Speaker, I sent a letter to the Food and 
Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control requesting an 
alert to the public that highlights the importance of our children 
becoming vaccinated for this outbreak of measles, particularly the MMR.
  The United States is experiencing a large multistate measles outbreak 
that started in California in December of 2014 and has spread to six 
additional States and Mexico. From December 28, Mr. Speaker, through 
January 21, 2015, 51 confirmed cases linked to this outbreak have been 
reported to the CDC: 42 from California and nine from six other 
States--three in Utah, two in Washington, one in Oregon, one in 
Colorado, one in Nebraska, and one in Arizona.
  But the spread of this is enormous. The most disturbing aspect of 
this outbreak is that 86 percent of the patients who have contracted 
the disease had either been unvaccinated or had an unknown vaccination 
status. The outbreak is aggravated by the large number of children 
whose parents have chosen not to get the MMR vaccine.
  What I want to focus on, Mr. Speaker, is for us to be cautious and 
for us to be able to do the right thing. The saddest case was an 8-
month-old baby in Arizona--innocent--who was exposed to the measles.
  I ask that we take this seriously, as a member of the Homeland 
Security Committee, and find a way to alert parents to make the right 
decision for their children. I will be continuing to work on this and 
have asked my own community to send out an alert to help save those 
children and the others who are vulnerable to the measles outbreak.

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