[comment caption=Should health officials reveal the family's identity?]A family that chose not to have its children vaccinated has brought Dunedin its first cases of English measles for eight years.
The potentially fatal disease has all but disappeared from New Zealand, with just 12 cases notified last year.
Medical Officer of Health for the Otago District Health Board, Dr John Holmes, would not provide details except that four children (of pre-school to high school age) had travelled to Vietnam in January.
The fifth affected child was a family friend who contracted the disease after the family returned.
"There are possibly other people who have been in contact. They have told their friends they've got measles . . . There may be some other cases."
Confirmed cases of the acute viral illness were unusual because of New Zealand's vaccination programme. The last major outbreak was in 1996 and the last confirmed case in Otago was in 2001.
Dr Holmes believed there was a danger of people becoming complacent because the disease was rarely seen here.
"They go to areas where there is measles, they get infected and they come back and infect other people."
Measles causes fever, coughing, running nose, conjunctivitis and a red blotchy rash which appears on the second to seventh day of the illness and normally lasts four to seven days.
The World Health Organisation notes measles is "a leading cause of death" among young children although immunisation programmes had reduced deaths globally to about 197,000 in 2007. Measles could also leave serious long-term effects.
Dr Holmes said English measles was a "different disease entirely" from rubella, or German measles, which was particularly dangerous for unborn children.
The immunisation for both diseases, as well as mumps, requires a single injection for children at age 15 months and another at 4 years.
What to do
• Parents should check their children's immunisations are up to date.
• Anyone with symptoms, who wants medical advice, should phone ahead before turning up at a doctor's surgery. It is important to isolate potentially infectious people to prevent others in waiting rooms becoming infected.
• People born after 1969, who have not already been immunised, should consider immunisation before travelling overseas.
