These doctors helped eliminate measles in ’98. Here’s how they did it – CTV
October 29, 2025
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 most contagious diseases in the world, ultimately resulting in the elimination of measles in Canada in 1998.
But now the country is poised to lose that status.
