Brittany Nicole Sponenberg’s son has been in a neonatal intensive care unit in Danville, Pennsylvania, for almost two months while his underdeveloped lungs and gut grew strong enough to handle regular breathing and feeding.
Last week, Sponenberg said, she sat silent on the phone with a doctor while he explained that her tiny baby had been exposed to measles while in the NICU. The area where her son is hospitalized is the epicenter of an expanding outbreak of measles, the world’s most contagious infection.
As the infection tears through unvaccinated families, it’s showing up in places where people who can’t be protected for various reasons – either because they’re too young or old, or because their immune systems don’t respond well to vaccines – have to live, work or go to school. That’s forcing people into difficult circumstances to protect themselves or their loved ones.
Sponenberg and her baby were exposed to measles at Geisinger Medical Center by an adult who visited the unit between Friday, August 14 and Monday, August 17. According to information provided by the doctor treating her son, the person developed a fever and a rash on August 17 and tested positive for measles the next day.
