DON’T TAKE VACCINES FOR GRANTED

If we fail to act now, measles will have kids ‘dropping like flies’, says UN expert

BRITAIN risks returning to the days when children were ‘dying like flies’ from measles because of rising complacency over vaccinations, a United Nations expert has warned. Dr Robin Nandy, chief of immunisations at Unicef, said parents and doctors have ‘dropped their guard’ against the illness. He highlighted the loss of the UK’s measles free status as a sign of how falling vaccination rates threaten to reverse decades of progress against infectious diseases.

Dr Nandy said: ‘People have forgotten how dangerous these diseases can be. I’m from the generation of physicians that have seen children dying like flies of measles in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s something that completely sticks in your mind.’

He added: ‘If you look at younger doctors in high-income countries, they have not seen outbreaks of measles killing children in large numbers. But the current resurgence of measles needs to remind us that if we drop our guard then all our success against measles could be reversed.

‘We have had one of the most successful magic bullets ever, in the form of vaccine and immunisations. Let’s not go back to where we were.’

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Dr Nandy said health officials and parents no longer treated immunisation as a priority because they had begun to ‘take vaccines for granted’.

He urged the Government to make the vaccinations the ‘highest priority’, echoing the Mail’s call for a massive publicity drive to reassure parents that vaccines, particularly MMR, are both safe and vital.

Speaking at the Unicef headquarters in New York, Dr Nandy said: ‘From the economic side alone, it is a

‘The NHS is struggling’

no-brainer for governments. The NHS is struggling and vaccination is a very inexpensive intervention.

‘The cost of vaccines is nothing compared to the cost of treatment if you end up in hospital with measles and complications.’

The Mail’s ‘Give the children their jabs campaign’ launched last week amid soaring cases of measles fuelled by falling vaccination rates.

For MMR, 90.3 per cent of children had their first dose in 2018-19, down from 91.2 per cent the year before, continuing a five-year downward trend. Some 86.4 per cent received their second dose of the MMR vaccine by their fifth birthday, a fall from 87.2 per cent in the previous year.

Measles struck 991 children in England and Wales last year, treble the total for 2017. Across Europe, only France has more children without protection against the disease.

Dr Nandy, who has been chief of immunisation for the UN’s children agency since 2015, added: ‘At Unicef we fully support the Daily Mail campaign. Every child should have the right to vaccination.

‘Vaccination is an intervention that is effective, safe, widely available and relatively inexpensive. It has been proven over the past several decades to save children’s lives from illness and complications.’ He added: ‘After a positive trajectory over many decades then progress has stalled. It is really, really concerning.’

There were 364,808 cases of measles reported to the World Health Organisation in the first six months of this year – triple the amount seen in 2018, and the highest level since 2006. Dr Nandy called on social media companies to tackle anti-vaccine misinformation spread online.

He said: ‘Anti-vaccine sentiment is as old as the vaccine itself. The UK has been the centre of anti-vaxx movement ever since the smallpox vaccine was developed in the 1800s.

‘But it is growing as a problem because the way people get the information has changed. Social media messages are spread far more effectively than during the days of the carrier pigeon.’

Dozens of influential health experts have thrown their support behind the Daily Mail’s childhood vaccination campaign, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Simon Stevens, head of NHS England.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges last night became the latest major body to back our campaign. Its chairman, Professor Carrie MacEwen, said: ‘The MMR vaccine is a proven lifesaver, but it only works if all children are vaccinated, so parents have a duty to make sure their children get the jab.

‘The Daily Mail is right to warn of the dangers to the population that are being caused by online scare stories and fake news.’