Summary
Information for parents and others about how children and young people were affected by the measles outbreak in 2011.
This booklet is accompanied by a video where Felicity Lyme, who caught measles during the 2011 outbreaks, talks about what the disease is like.
Felicity Lymes:
Measles just feels like having a really bad flu – you get achey, you get a sore head, you just feel like it is just like flu. You know, it’s just bad, you just feel like it’s a winter flu.
And then, when measles develops, you get terribly sick, you get awful, awful temperatures, and everything hurts and you can’t breathe. You get spots, you get rashes. I hallucinated, I was delirious … it is actually just like flu on crack. It’s just awful. It’s the most awful thing you can imagine. Especially when you don’t think that measles is bad.
And it develops, and you can’t do anything for yourself. You lose the ability to be a 19-year-old who does things for herself, who can go to the bathroom by herself, and drink water and do all that. Measles takes away all those aspects of everyday life that you think that you’d have. You don’t know who you are … it’s just this completely awful disease that people don’t think about.