With measles outbreaks growing in Canada, this mother pleads with parents to vaccinate

Rebecca Archer lovingly places a pair of small glasses on a shelf filled with memorabilia like trinkets and photos. They belonged to her 10-year-old daughter, Renae, who suddenly died after a measles infection.

"She was just really intelligent. Just a really happy child, always smiling," she remembers.

Renae was just five months old when she got the measles – too young to be vaccinated, but unable to avoid being exposed during an outbreak in Manchester, England, in 2013.

The infant was hospitalized, but recovered. For the next 10 years, Renae had no other medical issues, her mom says. 

But the measles virus was sitting dormant in her brain for years. When it woke up, Renae started having seizures. Then, she couldn't speak, or eat, or even stay conscious. 

"The fact that it was measles, I just couldn't get my head around it," Archer said. 

With measles cases on the rise in Canada at rates unseen in almost three decades — and vaccination coverage for childhood vaccines like the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot falling since the pandemic  — Archer and others who have suffered from measles complications are pleading that those who can get vaccinated do. 

When Renae's seizures began, she was suffering from a rare complication of measles called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, or SSPE. Out of 100,000 measles cases, it happens to less than a dozen people. 

But for kids like Renae who get measles before they're 15 months old, the risk level rises significantly – to one in 609. 

It is almost always fatal, and there's little doctors can do to help — a hard truth for Archer to accept.

"I always had it in my mind, once we found out what was actually wrong, Renae, we'll get her back to herself again," she said.

Instead, doctors told Archer her first-born daughter had no brain activity. There was nothing to do – except decide when to turn off her life-support machines.

The mother says she didn't imagine measles could do this much damage. Now, her grief is tinged with rage: she says that Renae would still be alive if others were immunized against measles.

"You never think it's going to happen to you," she said.