No measles here at this time in Northumberland

Syringe-By Kristine Wook-Free Use Domain-Upsplash

By Cecilia Nasmith, Northumberland 89.7 FM News

Northumberland County

The Haliburton Kawartha Northumberland Peterborough Board of Health meeting for March highlighted that, at this time, the geographies served by the health unit do not currently have active measles cases.

In a report from that meeting issued this week, however, it was stated that the province does have 350 current cases across 11 health units – including neighbouring ones.

Of those cases, 96% of those infected were either unvaccinated or had only one dose of the vaccine.

“These outbreaks are linked to declining vaccination rates,” the report said.

“The organization has been actively preparing, including on-going school surveillance, public-education awareness and contact-tracing readiness.”

As was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, however, these proactive measures take up a great deal of the health unit's resources and have the potential to take away from other public-health priorities.

The report also included an update on a youth substance-use-prevention pilot project based on the Planet Youth Icelandic Prevention Model. Last year, the former Peterborough Public Health received a grant for the pilot from the Public Health Agency of Canada. Since that time, however, Peterborough Public Health has merged with the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit – in light of which the implementation component of the pilot is current being reviewed in light of a broader geographical matrix.