Funding outcome

Measles is very contagious and can cause complications in children, like pneumonia, seizures, and blindness. Currently, there is an ongoing global outbreak as kids are missing vaccine doses, more people are hesitant towards vaccines, and a false belief that measles is not dangerous. This has led to the resurgence of measles in many regions of the world where it was previously rare and travel related. In Canada, there were >5000 new cases in 2025 compared to only 12 cases in 2023. More than 70% of these cases were in children (0-18 year old), and children also made up the majority of patients who were hospitalized from measles. Despite the high impact of measles on child health, there is still limited information on the spread of measles and factors that can make measles more severe in children within the current Canadian outbreak. We aim to describe these variables in children diagnosed with measles in Alberta. Our first goal is to describe the clinical course and complications of measles in children who are severely sick (defined by as needing hospitalization). Secondly, we also want to determine demographic (age, gender, place of residency, etc.) and clinical variables (previous or current illnesses, vaccination status, symptoms) for hospitalized cases. For these goals, we will access the health data of all 1500 pediatric measles cases in Alberta and describe the symptoms of children diagnosed with measles who require hospitalization. Moreover, we will also use statistical methods to find patterns in children hospitalized with measles pertaining to their background, such as their demographic variables or previous medical history. This would be an important step towards finding potential causes that could lead to worse outcomes in some children and not others. All together, we aim to complete the first Canadian population-based study of the 2025 measles outbreak, to better inform pediatric care and healthcare planning.