The United Kingdom is one of six European countries that recently lost measles elimination status, and health experts say the U.S. will likely lose its status this spring.
The decisive factor is whether the country has had continuous spread of the disease for a year.
Outbreaks in Texas and South Carolina have been driven by unvaccinated people. Hundreds of cases have been confirmed so far — and health officials are monitoring a positive case in a child who visited California’s Disneyland.
Amid this news, The Conversation has been sharing stories about Hawaiʻi’s aliʻi who died of measles on a trip to London 202 years ago. An exhibit at the British Museum is drawing attention to that ill-fated voyage of King Liholiho and Queen Kamāmalu.
As HPR reflects on that time, The Conversation thought it fitting to check with ʻIolani Palace. The Friends of ʻIolani Palace operates the museum. During tours, they mention the tragic voyage of a kingdom crossing oceans to solidify ties with Great Britain.
After the deaths of the monarchs, the Hawaiian Kingdom would go on to require vaccinations of its people and fine them if they didn't protect themselves.
Zita Cup Choy, historian with the Friends of ʻIolani Palace, and curatorial assistant Chase Benbow spoke to HPR.
In recent years, the palace has expanded its stories tied to the politics of the time. Choy begins with a historical perspective on measles.
“Beginning of the 19th century, there were a lot of epidemics: measles, smallpox, cholera, so anytime any aliʻi left Hawaiʻi, there was concern,” Cup Choy said.
Hawaiians had kahuna lapaʻau (healers), and their medicine practices were based on herbal remedies and prevention, she said. A year after a smallpox epidemic in 1853, a vaccination law was passed.
“The Minister of the Interior was to appoint vaccination officers and go to different districts. And every child born after the first day of June 1854 shall, within six months after the birth of such child, go to the vaccination clinic and get vaccinated,” Cup Choy said.
Benbow told HPR that these vaccination policies were meant to aggressively deal with epidemics that had been foreign to Hawaiʻi.
“Aliʻi were very intent on passing policies that they felt were going to decrease the depopulation of the Hawaiian Kingdom,” he said. “We were looking at aliʻi traveling abroad for all sorts of purposes, whether it was for diplomatic reasons, for personal reasons, and there seems to be an underlying theme of sort of concern about health.”
Cup Choy discovered that Hawaiʻi had a quarantine law in 1839, put in place to ensure diseases that were being imported from abroad didn't spread.
“The quarantine law in Hawaiʻi required a public health official to check out every ship, were there contagious diseases, or anyone who had suffered from a contagious disease and recovered for the last four months before arriving in the harbor, and if there was one case on that ship, it was quarantined for 40 days,” Cup Choy said.
Benbow added that the palace focuses on the agency of aliʻi who worked to develop policies aimed at preventing the spread of diseases and reducing population loss.
This story aired on The Conversation on Feb. 4, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
