MMR complacency puts children at risk
We forget how deadly these diseases are, say experts
‘No longer seen as life-threatening’
PARENTS have become complacent about vaccinating their children because they have forgotten the impact of devastating diseases, experts warned last night.
Many today have no idea what illnesses such as measles, polio or diphtheria could do to children because vaccination campaigns wiped them out in the UK generations ago.
Yet many of these viruses are still circulating abroad and could return amid falling uptake of childhood immunisations such as the MMR jab, doctors warn.
Dr Charlie Weller, head of vaccines at the Wellcome Trust, said: ‘Like many, I grew up in an environment where I didn’t see polio, rotavirus or diphtheria.
‘These critical diseases really can take your life or have a devastating impact on health, but they are out of our minds now. Complacency comes about when you don’t remember.’
She said vaccination programmes have become ‘a victim of their own success’.
‘If you are ill and given a drug that cures you, you remember that,’ Dr Weller added. ‘But with a preventative vaccine you never see the disease in the first place, so you don’t necessarily recognise what an amazing prevention this is. That breeds complacency.’
The Daily Mail is campaigning to improve the uptake of all childhood immunisations, after an NHS report last month revealed numbers had fallen for every single jab. The campaign has been backed by Health Secretary Matt Hancock, NHS chief executive Simon Stevens and Public Health England boss Duncan Selbie, as well as charities, doctors, scientists and even the United Nations.
Dr Weller last night added her support, saying: ‘I have been following the campaign and I have been very impressed.’
Diphtheria – a highly contagious virus that can cause breathing difficulties and paralysis – was eradicated in Britain after a vaccine was introduced in 1942. Before this there were 55,000 cases a year, killing 3,500 children annually.
The vaccine has been so effective that there have been fewer than 20 cases in the UK and four deaths in the past 20 years, mostly brought in from South Asia and Africa.
But experts warn that because diphtheria is so infectious, there is a risk of larger outbreaks if vaccination levels fall.
In the early 1990s, for example, there was a huge outbreak of diphtheria in the former Soviet countries after the break-up of the USSR, with 157,000 cases and 5,000 deaths in an eight-year period.
The USSR previously had a wellrun vaccination programme but in the chaos after its collapse immunisation rates fell and disease spread.
Uptake of the diphtheria vaccination in the UK is relatively high, with 92 per cent of babies last year having had three doses of the jab by the age of 16 weeks.
But that is down from 93 per cent two years earlier and is well short of the 95 per cent required to achieve ‘ herd immunity’ that experts recommend.
Dr Robin Nandy, chief of immunisation at Unicef, said: ‘People have forgotten how dangerous these diseases can be.
‘If you look at younger doctors in high-income countries, they have not seen outbreaks of measles killing children in large numbers.
‘Parents in Britain no longer see measles and diphtheria as lifethreatening diseases.’
Professor Jonathan Ball, from the University of Nottingham, said: ‘The reason that rates of immunisation have fallen is complex.
‘Some of it is down to misinformation of vaccine dangers that still do the circuit on social media, and some communities have consistently been difficult to engage with.
‘But I suspect much of it is down to the fact that we have forgotten how serious these infections can be and have started to think of them as simply trivial childhood infections.’
Polio was eradicated in the UK 40 years ago. Before a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, up to 8,000 people a year were paralysed with the disease in Britain and up to 750 killed.
Vaccination wiped out the virus in the UK in the late 1970s and went on to eliminate it in almost every country in the world.