French Tourist Battles Severe Measles After Morocco Trip

The forty-year-old recounts how he almost lost his life after a two-week stay in Morocco with his family last summer. The Nantais returned from the kingdom with a severe form of measles. At first, he had symptoms of a white angina: flu-like state, sore throat, persistent fever.

"I pushed hard to get a second opinion. The diagnosis of measles in an adult was not necessarily simple to make, especially since at first I did not yet have skin rashes. The chief infectiologist of the clinic then stepped in and identified the measles. I was coming back from Morocco and the epidemic was raging there... It’s still ongoing," he confides by phone to the newspaper La Montagne.

Admitted later to the intensive care unit of the Nantes University Hospital, he will spend fifty days there. "I was put in an artificial coma for eleven days. I had two pulmonary embolisms. They put me on my stomach, like for Covid, to try to save my lungs. I came close, clearly," testifies this survivor.

After a month of convalescence at home, Anthony realizes that his vaccination schedule was not up to date. "Two doses are required for this measles. I had potentially one, I say potentially since my health record was not clear on this. I did not have the second, in any case, with certainty."