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As the battle against the measles outbreak rages on, a campaign has been launched to vaccinate police and firefighters throughout the Tucson region against the highly contagious disease.

This week, nearly 2,000 members of the Tucson Police and Fire departments are being targeted for measles shots, if they cannot show proof of immunity.

With 20 confirmed measles cases in this area since the outbreak started in February, and more than a dozen new suspected cases under investigation — including several at local day-care centers — all-out efforts are under way to immunize as many unprotected residents as possible.

"As you know, we go into all kinds of homes and come in contact with all kind of people," said Sgt. Mark Robinson, a spokesman for the Tucson Police Department.

"This makes perfect sense to us as a common-sense precautionary measure. It just takes one contact with an infected person to bring it back to a briefing here, and expose all of us. That could conceivably be crippling to us, if measles were to spread through the department."

Roughly 1,200 members of the Police Department — including officers and detectives, crime-scene specialists and community-service officers — are affected by the "strong recommendation" to get vaccinated if they cannot show immunity through a blood test or shot record, Robinson said.

"I've got to get my measles shot — pretty much everybody does," he said.

Both city police and firefighters will be immunized at closed clinics set up at four Tucson fire stations around the city, with vaccine provided by the Pima County Health Department.

That includes some 600 uniformed firefighters also ordered to get the MMR shots — for measles, mumps and rubella — if they're not currently immune, said Capt. Norm Carlton, a Tucson Fire Department spokesman.

"Our thinking is we've got to protect those who protect others," he said. "If we go to a call and a child is suspect for measles and we don't know that but are exposed, then we will spread this with every call we go to after that. So we have to be proactive at dealing with this and putting a stop to it."

Plans also are under way to get the vaccine to the Pima County Sheriff's Department as well as police departments in Marana, Sahuarita, Green Valley and Oro Valley, and to corrections officers at the Pima County jail, said Patti Woodcock, a spokeswoman for the county health department.

More suspected measles cases are being reported from several Tucson-area day-care centers, said Woodcock, though she didn't have an exact number Wednesday afternoon.

"We are investigating those reports now and stepping up efforts to get day-care staff immunized as well," she said.