An Atlanta-area man contracted the first case of measles reported in Georgia since 2004, part of an increasing number of infections across the country, health officials said Tuesday.

The man became sick in May after traveling to Pakistan in late April, said Taka Wiley, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Division of Public Health. He recovered and nobody exposed to him has caught the highly contagious disease, she said.

Since January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has received reports of 132 measles cases from 15 states and the District of Columbia. It's the most since 1997, when there were 138.

The rise in cases is attributed to international travel and unvaccinated people, CDC officials said. Symptoms of measles include rash and high fever. It can cause serious complications such as pneumonia and inflammation of the brain.

At least 118 of this year's measles cases involve people who weren't vaccinated or who didn't know their vaccination history, said CDC spokesman Curtis Allen. Fifty of them had opted out of vaccination based on personal beliefs, he said.

The Georgia man, who was born in a foreign country, had never been vaccinated, state officials said.

The ongoing transmission of measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, but the disease is still common in other countries. All of the U.S. cases this year have been tied to travel abroad, Allen said.

The countries implicated in this year's measles cases include Switzerland, Israel, Belgium, Italy, India, Germany, China, Pakistan, Russia and the Philippines, he said.

Areas of the U.S. that have had the most measles cases include New York City, Illinois, California, Washington state and Arizona, Allen said.