Rubella - Description

Rubella was once a common childhood disease. However, an effective vaccine (pronounced vak-SEEN) against the disease was invented in 1969. A vaccine is a material that causes the body's immune system to build up resistance to a particular disease. Over the next three decades the number of rubella cases dropped more than 99.6 percent. In 1996 only 229 cases of the disease were reported in the United States and public health officials hoped to eliminate the disease completely within a few years.

The virus that causes rubella is spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes, sending droplets of water containing the virus into the air. If these droplets come to rest on another person, the virus may enter the healthy person's body, causing that person to develop the disease.

Rubella has an incubation period of about twelve to twenty-three days. The incubation period is the time after a person is infected before the symptoms of the disease first appear. An infected person is contagious (can spread the disease) during a period of about seven days before the symptoms appear until four days after they appear.

Rubella is usually considered a childhood disease but people of any age can catch it if they have not been vaccinated. People who have been vaccinated are protected against the disease forever.

Rubella poses the greatest danger to pregnant women and their fetuses. Women who develop the disease during the first trimester (three months) of their pregnancy face a serious risk. The virus passes from an infected woman's body into the body of the fetus. The virus may cause a serious infection that can cause birth defects or even kill the fetus.

This risk is considered very low in the United States because most women in this country were vaccinated against rubella when they were children. However, in some parts of the world countries do not have the money or the medical facilities to vaccinate all children. Many girls still grow up unprotected against the disease and the risk it poses if they become pregnant.