Who Dies With Measles?

Let's take a look at all of the kids who have died in the measles outbreak in Israel...

Update - Another child, a previously healthy 9-year-old, has died with measles.

As measles cases continue to surge, it is a good time to take a look at the one myth about measles from anti-vaccine influencers that is the easiest to refute. And that is that healthy children don’t die with measles and other vaccine preventable diseases. Instead, folks who want to scare you away from vaccinating your kids push the idea that only kids with serious health problems can die.

Who Dies With Measles?

Tragically, we are going to do this by simply posting media reports of all the kids who are dying in Israel’s latest measles outbreak.

The case count in this measles outbreak in Israel is likely much higher, with some reports of “thousands of unreported cases.”

An ongoing outbreak which began last April and which has risen to at least 2,900 3140 cases, with at least 15 16 deaths and 988 1071 hospitalizations, including many children who ended up in the ICU.

An ongoing outbreak in a country where measles cases and deaths had been rare in the past twenty-five years!

In fact, except for a few deaths associated with a measles outbreak in 2019, measles has been under very good control in Israel since 2000, and there have been very few cases and even fewer deaths.

The current outbreak seems to be concentrated among clusters or pockets of susceptible children with very low vaccination rates in several Haredi neighborhoods and cities, where there are even reports of parents bringing their children to ‘measles parties.’

At least there used to be very few measles cases and deaths in Israel…

So why are so many kids dying with measles in Israel this year?

Although folks like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr like to push the idea that it is “very, very hard to kill a healthy child… with measles, it is very easy to see that isn’t true.

Kids are dying simply because they have been exposed to measles:

• The Ministry of Health reports that a one-year-old baby who was not vaccinated died today from measles.

• The Ministry of Health reports that an 11-month-old baby with no underlying health conditions, who had not been vaccinated, died today due to complications from measles.

• The Ministry of Health reports that an unvaccinated 11-month-old infant with no underlying health issues has died today from measles complications. About a week ago, the infant was transferred from Poriya Medical Center to Rambam Hospital and placed on ECMO.

• The Ministry of Health reports that a one-year-old toddler who was not vaccinated against measles has died today due to complications from the disease.

• The Ministry of Health reports that a toddler, about a year and a half old and unvaccinated against measles, has died today from complications of the disease after arriving at the hospital in critical condition.

• The Health Ministry reports that a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler who was not vaccinated against measles died yesterday due to measles complications.

• The Ministry of Health reports that an unvaccinated toddler has died of measles today.

• The Ministry of Health reports that an unvaccinated toddler died yesterday from measles.

• The Ministry of Health reports that an unvaccinated toddler has died today from measles.

• The Ministry of Health reports that an unvaccinated toddler died from measles over the weekend.

• The Ministry of Health reports that a two-year-old child, who had been hospitalized for several weeks and connected to ECMO after contracting measles, has died today.

• New - The Ministry of Health reports that an unvaccinated boy about nine years old has died of measles. (Feb 2026)

Instead, nearly all deaths from measles are in those who are unvaccinated and are simply exposed to someone else with measles.

Press reports from the Health Ministry for the children who have died in this outbreak follow a similar pattern - an unvaccinated child who is unvaccinated. In some of these communities, vaccination rates were as low as 31 to 50 percent, with rates slowly rising by 10 to 20 percent after the start of the outbreak.

Sure, having a chronic medical condition would put them at even greater risk for complications if they get sick with measles, but even otherwise healthy children and adults are at risk for complications and death.

And yes, some may be dying because they are arriving at the hospital too late to be saved, but that still reinforces the fact that measles can and often does make kids very, very sick!

These cases and deaths reinforce the fact that getting vaccinated against measles is necessary and that folks shouldn’t wait for an outbreak in their area to help them make that decision.

More on Measles Deaths in Children

• When Measles is Allowed to Run Its Usual Course, Kids Can Die

• Why Are You Still Worried About the MMR Vaccine?

• Fun and Games with Measles?

• The Anti-Vaccine Agenda of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

• The First Five Errors in Turtles All The Way Down

• Measles Snapshot in Israel

• Nine of the 11 Measles-related Deaths Happened Within a One-kilometer Radius in Jerusalem, Health Ministry Says

• ‘Entire Buildings Full of Sick Children’: Behind the Measles Outbreak Around Jerusalem

• Top Israeli immunologist accused of promoting antivaccine views

• Barriers and enablers to vaccination in the ultra-orthodox Jewish population: a systematic review

• “If a rabbi did say ‘you have to vaccinate,’ we wouldn’t”: Unveiling the secular logics of religious exemption and opposition to vaccination