Childhood immunizations in the United States
Mumps is a contagious disease caused by the virus by the same name. Since most people in the United States have been vaccinated, mumps is now a rare disease in this country. Currently there are no specific treatments for mumps.
Mumps is spread person to person by droplets of saliva or mucus from the mouth, nose or throat of an infected person. This is done through coughing, sneezing, talking, and coming into contact with contaminate items. Transmission likely occurs before the salivary glands swell an up to 5 days after the swelling begins.
MMR vaccine controversy
The MMR scare caused a low percentage of mumps vaccination (less than 30%), which resulted in outbreaks in Japan. There were up to 2002 measles-caused deaths in Japan while there were none in the UK, but the extra deaths were attributed to Japan's application of the vaccine at a later age. A spokesman for the Ministry of Health said that the discontinuation had no effect in measles, but also mentioning that there were more deaths by measles while MMR was being used. In 1994 the government dropped the vaccination requirement for measles and rubella due to the 1993 MMR scare. Japan is nowadays the only developed country with large measles epidemics. It has been called a "measles exporter" by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As another consequence of the scare, in 2003, 7 million schoolchildren had not been vaccinated against rubella.