TORONTO - Dr. Arlene King got measles more than 60 years ago, but she still remembers feeling so weak that getting her shoes on was a challenge.

It didn’t take long for King, who was in Grade 1 at the time, to infect her 18-month-old brother whose fever spiked to such a high temperature that it triggered his body to convulse in a febrile seizure.

“It really was not a benign disease,” said King, who went on to become a leading public health specialist involved in measles prevention at federal and provincial levels.

Measles was ubiquitous before there was a vaccine to prevent it and King remembers her mother’s gratitude and eagerness to get her uninfected kids immunized when a vaccine was approved in 1963.

Parents and public health providers rallied to stop the circulation of one of the

See Full Page