MILWAUKEE -- The Milwaukee Health Department said that lots of families have been showing up at clinics to get vaccinations against the measles.

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Four people in the area, including three young children from a day care, have been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease.

Health department spokeswoman Raquel Filmanowicz said many families were showing up at two clinics on Saturday hoping to get vaccinated. Originally the department scheduled one clinic for Saturday on the city's south side, but the department added one on the north side due to expected high demand.

Filmanowicz said no new cases have been reported so far.

She said the department is working with public and parochial schools to get messages to families encouraging them to get vaccinated.

Filmanowicz said the department has received more than 1,200 calls to its hot line about the measles cases. She said normally it wouldn't get more than a half dozen calls a day.

"This is very serious. If we don't control the outbreak now we could move from tens of cases to hundreds of cases very quickly," said Paul Biedrzycki, with the Milwaukee County Health Department.

Measles is spread by coughing or sneezing but it is preventable with a vaccine. The confirmed cases in Milwaukee are prompting local doctors to speak up about the importance of immunization.

So far, no measles cases have been reported in the Madison area. Doctors said that someone with the measles would have to travel to Madison and come into close contact to someone who hasn't received a vaccination, which is why doctors said parents need to immunize their children.

"I'm just mad at the parents that come into a day care and they don't have their kids vaccinated. And when you have newborn babies, it's just not right," said Craig Moore, the father of a child who was infect with measles at a Milwaukee day care.

The close contact and sharing of toys between children at day cares is the reason that St. Mary's Day Care requires up-to-date immunizations.

"We're constantly picking up toys, and we have a soiled toys bin and we get them washed at the end of the night, once they're taken away from the other children," said Peggy Hoffmann, a day care teacher at St. Mary's Day Care.

The day care said it checks every few months to make sure immunizations are up-to-date.

Father Sean Ward said that getting vaccinations for his 3-year-old twins was a high priority.

"They're up to date, and they always have been. It's just a focus, when you're a parent, you want to do as much as you can to help their well-being," Ward said.

Doctors said that measles outbreaks in the United States happen because parents fail to realize the seriousness of immunizing their children.

"Immunization prevents all of this, and every parent must take immunization seriously, because we haven't eradicated measles in the United States because we keep importing it, and we keep having kids that aren't immunized," said Dr. William Scheckler, an epidemiologist at St. Mary's Hospital.

In the past decade, some reports have suggested that the measles, mumps, rubella, or MMR vaccine might be linked to autism, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that there is no relationship between the two.

The CDC recommends that children get two doses of the MMR vaccine -- one dose after the child's first birthday and the second dose between the ages of 4 and 6.

Measles is a respiratory infection. Symptoms include a red, blotchy rash, high fever, runny nose and watery eyes. The virus is contagious four days before the rash appears until four days after it.

The CDC said that if one person has measles, 90 percent of their close contacts will also become infected.

Experts said that 20 percent of measles cases lead to complications -- ear infections and pneumonia are most common. The CDC said that one in 1,000 will die from measles.

Those complications are most common in children under age 5 and adults older than 20.