EDMONTON — Following measles exposure alerts at the Foothills Medical Centre and Alberta Children's Hospital emergency departments, the provincial government has unveiled what it is calling a landmark measles education initiative, designed to teach Albertans about a disease the province had previously declared a solved problem of the twentieth century.

"For decades, our children learned about measles only in the abstract, in dusty old textbooks written by so-called experts," said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, speaking from a hospital corridor that had been cordoned off with caution tape. "We are bringing that knowledge back into the community, in real time, in our emergency rooms, where every family can experience it firsthand."

Under the new framework, parents who visited the affected emergency departments early last Thursday morning, or Friday evening, are being offered an interactive learning module in the form of a phone call informing them they have been exposed. Officials clarified that the goal is not to prevent measles, but to ensure that when Albertans contract it, they can correctly identify what it is.

The province emphasized that the initiative builds on its broader philosophy of informed personal choice, in which Albertans are trusted to make their own decisions, provided they first sit in a waiting room next to someone who made a different one. "We don't believe in lecturing parents," the spokesperson added. "We believe in letting the virus do the teaching."

Pressed on whether a more effective educational tool might be the widely available vaccine that eliminated measles in Canada in 1998, the minister's office said that approach was "under review" and noted that lecturing people about vaccines had, regrettably, become "politically complicated."

At press time, the government announced a follow-up module for the fall semester, in which Albertans will learn about whooping cough, again, the hard way.