All this tough-talking won’t help jab uptake

IDON’T envy the parents of firstyear girls these days. Just as they have adjusted to the strangeness of secondary school, just as the lockers, book lists, parents’ association, forms and sports gear are put in place, along comes the cellophane-wrapped information packs about Gardasil and an inoculation schedule begging their signature in the weigh-a-ton schoolbags.

So it was a few years ago when my daughter started secondary.

I admit I was taken aback at the timing. Despite repeated GP visits over the years, I had no idea that the jab was imminent, with my daughter aged just 12.

Truth be told, nor did I think inoculating a child – who it seemed only yesterday was playing with her dolls – against sexually transmitted diseases was a matter of terrific urgency.

I was sending her to a new secondary school that’s all, not onto the streets.

In the end, I took my normal course of action when in doubt; I found out what most parents were doing and followed sheep-like suit.

My daughter had the jab with thankfully no side-effects and I’m spared the trouble of organising it for her now that she is older.

Normally, I wholeheartedly support mass vaccination. I’ve also a low tolerance for those who crow sanctimoniously about their opposition, without acknowledging that the reason their darlings aren’t dead from measles, whooping cough or some other dreadful childhood disease is that they are piggybacking on the herd immunity provided by the rest of us.

YET if I was asked to sign up my child today when uptake rates are falling off a cliff, I might still be vacillating and wracked with worry about the horror stories. There is not a shred of hard evidence that Gardasil is not safe – although there are conscientious parents like Jonathan Irwin who are unswerving in their conviction that their daughters’ ill health is a direct result of it.

First-hand testimony like that carries a lot more weight than scaremongering keyboard warriors who peddle pseudoscience and hysteria and whose influence has been let fill the vacuum of information created by supine health authorities and a Government that appears only halfhearted about its immunisation programmes.

Presumably Minister Simon Harris and the HSE’s Tony O’Brien thought they would reverse the downward spiral by talking tough to the HPV antivaxxers.

O’Brien sternly lambasted the ‘emotional terrorism’ aimed at parents while the Minister told them to ‘butt out’ of providing advice until they become medical professionals.

This autocratic, bullying style is totally counterproductive; it takes no account of public fear and, if anything, increases suspicions. Most parents who are refusing the jab are genuinely doing what they think is best for their child.

THANKS mainly to social media, they have been led to believe that the side-effects outweigh the vaccine’s power to safeguard against some forms of cervical cancer and ultimately save women’s lives. It is up to health officials to persuade them that they have never been more wrong and to challenge the sceptics to come up with some non-anecdotal evidence about Gardasil’s dangers.

Family GPs should also talk to parents of pre-teen children about having the jab at the start of secondary school and try to reassure them about it.

There should be a decent public information campaign and more medics like Dr Karina Butler, a leading infectious disease consultant at Our Lady’s Hospital in Crumlin – who put her money where her mouth is to say that her three daughters have had the jab.

Actions speak louder than words after all and it’s time our tough-talking health chiefs realised that.

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