CBS Photo ArchiveIn the wake of the measles outbreak that continues to plague the United States, a 27-year-old letter written by author Roald Dahl has gone viral.
The late British novelist, who penned hits such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda, wrote the missive in 1988, just two years before he died at the age of 74.
In his letter, the father of five recalls the tragic death of his daughter Olivia, who passed away at age seven after contracting measles.
As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn't do anything.
"Are you feeling all right?" I asked her.
"I feel all sleepy," she said.
In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.
Dahl continues, explaining how the virus "turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her," before issuing a plea asking for every parent to vaccinate their child.
On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs.
They can insist that their child is immunised against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered.
Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.
The late James and the Giant Peach author also begs parents not to deny vaccinating their kids "out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear," adding it's "really almost a crime" to allow a child to go immunized.
While Dahl's letter is nearly three decades old, his words are particularly topical as the current measles outbreak has spurred a fierce debate about parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.
Per the CDC, 102 people in 14 states were reported to have measles in January, with most cases stemming from the Disneyland outbreak in California in mid-December.
Measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000 (Dahl even applauds America in his 1982 letter for having "virtually wiped out" the disease). Symptoms of the highly-contagious virus include "a fever, runny nose, cough, red eyes, and sore throat, and is followed by a rash that spreads all over the body," according to health officials.
President Barack Obama recently spoke out about the controversy in an interview with Today's Savannah Guthrie, insisting there is no reason not to vaccinate your children.
"I understand that there are families that in some cases are concerned about the effect of vaccinations," he said. "The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We've looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren't reasons to not."
He added: "You should get your kids vaccinated. It's good for them, but we should be able to get back to the point where measles effectively is not existing in this country."