If only there had been measles jabs when I was little, my friend would still be alive
PERHAPS it’s just my generation, the older end of the population, that rushed its babies to be vaccinated against measles, having grown up, as we did, in the shadow of the life-threatening childhood disease. It’s a parental habit that appears to have diminished. There’s now a big rise in UK cases, which have quadrupled in a year, and there are warnings that children could die unless they have their jabs. It’s the biggest British measles outbreak since the 1990s.
Measles is frighteningly easy to catch if you are not vaccinated. In Ireland last year, the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) noted that the uptake of the MMR – measles, mumps and rubella – vaccine had fallen below 90%, leaving the country at risk of large outbreaks.
And in the West Midlands in England, where health chiefs have declared a ‘national incident’, 50 children have been treated for measles in Birmingham Children’s Hospital in the past month when normally it would have expected none. Unvaccinated children have been sent home from school for up to 21 days due to the risk of contact with a child with the disease. Catch-up jab clinics are being held in schools across the region in a bid to prevent a surge.
We oldies are only too familiar with measles, and that what is so often thought of as a minor childhood disease is anything but. I was born in 1950 and there was no protection against it until 1968.
When I was three, I became very ill with measles. I had a raging temperature, was covered in a rash and my breathing was laboured. The GP came to see me every day for three weeks.
On her instructions, Dad brought my bed down to the sitting room. Mum had to keep a constant eye on me as they were warned I could fade and die quickly. The curtains were closed so the room was in darkness. Any light, Mum was told, could do permanent damage to my eyesight. It had to be quiet, too, to protect my hearing.
The early days of my illness – when everyone seemed to be panicking – are my earliest childhood memories. I cannot recall being poorly. I only know what my mother told me of her fear. In the 1950s, it was not unusual for a child to die from the disease.
Families grieved for their lost infants, keeping what had been their favourite toy on the mantelpiece or a faded photograph of them in their Sunday best.
My parents were terrified. I was their only child. I can only imagine what they went through, caring for a toddler they adored but knew they could lose.
They knew how high the stakes were as their only child lay silent with no treatment on offer.
A neighbour’s daughter, Jane, a little girl around my age fell ill at the same time as me. We’d been playmates. I remember, as I began to recover, hearing my mother whispering to my grandmother what Jane’s mother had told her.
Like me, Jane had been hot and silent, covered in a similar rash.
After a few weeks, she’d seemed to rally a little and began to talk. Then, as her father read her a story, she became confused. She said she was sleepy. Hours later she was dead. My parents could only pray I would not follow.
I lived, but was weak for some time after the worst was over. I regained my energy and verve, but was left with asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis – still irritating today.
Had a jab been available when I was a baby, my mother would have been down to the clinic like a shot. As medical science advanced, I had jabs for everything – smallpox, whooping cough, even the measles when I was 18. So why are parents not having their children immunised now?
As recently as 2019, the UK was virtually measles-free, having recovered from the 1990s when Dr Andrew Wakefield made a discredited assertion that the MMR jab could cause autism.
Back then parents became anxious about taking their children for vaccinations, but the scientific research which rubbished Wakefield was so powerful, trust in the vaccine returned – and 95% coverage was achieved, enough to protect the whole UK.
Now, though, the proportion of fully jabbed five-year-olds in Britain has fallen to 84.5% – not enough to create herd immunity.
We can only assume the pandemic and conspiracy stories about Covid vaccines have engendered the kind of nervousness that existed after Wakefield’s assertions.
I believe the MMR vaccine is safe and has protected millions of children from a disease I know too well is highly dangerous.
Perhaps if parents are worried about mumps, measles and rubella being together in one jab, doctors should have compelling medical evidence at their fingertips to explain it’s not harmful – or they should just agree to give each separately. More expensive for the health services, but surely worth it for saving a child’s life.
It’s just a trip with a baby to the doctor, and a second when they’re a bit older. No more worries about falling ill, dying or infecting others. A responsible thing to do. Simple.