Viral outbreak reaches the Five Towns and Far Rockaway

Mumps the word

By The Jewish Star Staff

Pediatrician Dr. Hylton Lightman said he has seen over a dozen cases. He cautioned parents to be careful but not to be too alarmed about the non-fatal disease.

“If the child has any symptoms they should stay at home and shouldn’t share any drinks. Monitor them for severe headaches or severe abdominal pain with persistent vomiting, otherwise it should resolve by itself without any long term sequela complications,” he explained.

Bnot Shulamith Elementary School in Woodmere, in an email to parents on Monday, Feb. 8, announced that there was a confirmed case of mumps in the school. The email said that the school was waiting for guidance from the Health Department and asked parents to be sure that their children had received both scheduled MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccinations. The initial one is given to children ages 12-15 months; a second dose is given between ages four and six.

“Anyone with a compromised immune system or any other medical concern, please contact their private physician for medical guidance,” the school advised.

Over 600 cases of mumps have been reported in New York. Investigators say the spread began in August of 2009 at a summer camp in Sullivan County with an 11-year old boy that brought the disease from England. Since then it has spread through Chassidic neighborhoods in Rockland County and Brooklyn. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the epidemic is the largest outbreak of mumps since 2006. The MMR vaccine is also not 100 perfect effective against the disease, according to the CDC.

Mumps is a viral inflammation of the salivary glands that causes swelling and pain on either one or both sides of the face, according to Lightman. It causes headaches and, in male victims, swelling of the testicles. In female victims mumps can lead to swelling in the uterus. Very rarely in male cases, the disease is associated with infertility; in a few very rare cases mumps can cause complications in the central nervous system.

Mumps can affect children and anyone who’s not immune, he said.

The disease is contagious for six days before the onset of the symptoms and nine days after symptoms appear.

“There’s no usual treatment other than Tylenol and Motrin for the pain,” Lightman said. He recommended that people suffering from mumps should avoid acidic foods because they stimulate the salivary glands and make the experience more painful.

“It’s a self-eliminating disease,” Lightman said, “It improves by itself.”

Mary Ellen Laurain, director of communications at the Nassau County Department of Health, said that while there was a confirmed case in Bnot Shulamith, the student is not from Nassau County. There are no confirmed cases of the mumps among Nassau County residents, she said.

Lightman blamed lack of immunization for the spread of the diseases in the Orthodox community.

“Usually most people are immunized; those who are not immunized rely on the concept of herd immunity — where enough individuals are immunized it will prevent the disease from spreading into the community at large,” Lightman said. “Unfortunately, there are some people who refuse to immunize their children because of the fallacious fear of MMR and autism.”

Last week the British medical journal Lancet retracted a 1998 study that linked the MMR vaccine and the development of autism in children. The study is blamed for an increase in disease in children whose parents were scared to vaccinate. The study only involved 12 children and the same number of control patients; scientists have never been able to replicate its reported results.