To the Editor: We concur with Aratchige and colleagues that mumps in young adults is a “forgotten” disease,1 and believe that mumps control in Australia has suffered from both the successes and failures of our measles elimination program. Among residents of Sydney’s eastern and southern suburbs, 100 cases of mumps were notified in the second half of 2007. Sixty-three per cent of those who contracted the disease were aged 20–29 years, and 65% were male. This compares with an average of 13.6 cases (range, 4–32 cases) notified per annum from 1999 to 2006.
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- 1 South Eastern Sydney Illawarra Public Health Unit, Sydney, NSW.
- 2 School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
- 3 St George Hospital, Sydney, NSW.
- 4 St George Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
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- 2. Gidding HF, Wood J, MacIntyre CR, et al. Sustained measles elimination in Australia and priorities for long term maintenance. Vaccine 2007; 25: 3574-3580.
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- 4. Schmid D, Holzmann H, Popow-Kraupp TH, et al. Mumps vaccine failure or vaccination scheme failure? Clin Microbiol Infect 2007; 13: 1138-1139.
- 5. National Coalition of STD Directors. National guidelines for Internet-based STD and HIV prevention: accessing the power of the Internet for public health. http://www.ncsddc.org/upload/wysiwyg/documents/IGE.pdf (accessed Dec 2008).