Medical Importance of Measles in Chile

Relative Importance of Measles as a Cause of Death  The present position of acute communicable diseases appears far from satisfactory in Chile, if compared with the United States, Canada, and European countries, where they have long ago been swept out of the leading causes of death. Nevertheless, the trend since 1920 until 1960 shows a remarkable progress (Fig. 1).Unfortunately, in recent years it can be noted that mortality tends to become stationary and even shows a slight upward trend, due mostly to measles, as we will see later.During the last decade, measles increased in relative importance as a cause of death. The first column of Table 1 shows the total number of annual deaths from all causes in Chile; the second column records the number of deaths from measles; the third column demonstrates a notable increase (about 20-fold) in the relative importance of measles which, in 1960, accounts