Measles outbreak in N.B. renews interest in national vaccination registry [Video]

A measles outbreak in New Brunswick and a surge of cases across Canada has renewed calls for a national vaccination registry.

New Brunswick has 50 confirmed cases of the highly infectious respiratory disease, as of Wednesday — all in health Zone 3, which includes Fredericton and parts of the Upper St. John River Valley area, and all linked to an initial travel-related case reported on Oct. 24.

The province’s outbreak has pushed Canada’s annual case count to 131, including the death of child under five in Hamilton, the highest number of cases the country has seen in a decade.

“It’s definitely scary,” said Dr. Joanne Langley, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax and a member of the Canadian Center for Vaccinology.

She believes creating a national registry where people could access their immunization records would help increase vaccine uptake, and reduce the incidence of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, along with the associated health-care costs. …