These symptoms last for 1 or 2 weeks. But measles also causes ear infections in nearly 1 out of every 10 children who get it. As many as 1 out of 20 children with measles gets pneumonia. About 1 child in every 1,000 who get measles will get encephalitis. Measles can also make a pregnant woman have a miscarriage or give birth prematurely.
Measles spreads very easily from person to person.
You can get measles from an infected person who coughs or sneezes around you or even talks to you. Before measles vaccine was available, nearly all children had measles by the time they were 15 years old. An average of 530,000 cases a year were reported in the United States during the 10 years before vaccine was available. And during each of these years over 450 people died because of measles. Now, thanks to measles vaccine, the number of measles cases each year is a fraction of what it was then.