STAT January 12, 2026
The return of vaccine-preventable illnesses means updating education
I went through medical school, residency, and a fellowship in the United States in an era when vaccine-preventable diseases were treated as history. Measles, tetanus, pertussis, and mumps appeared on exams, not in hospital wards. Vaccines — a victim of their own success — have worked so well that most clinicians in my generation have never seen these illnesses firsthand.
But I have.
In Haiti, I cared for a patient with tetanus, an agonizing disease marked by muscle spasms, respiratory failure, and suffering that is difficult to witness and even harder to forget. I have watched patients in India die from meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis, a disease entirely preventable with routine...
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