Why I’m backing Mail’s vaccines campaign
Microsoft founder joins our fight after witnessing horror measles inflicts on young
BILL GATES today warns parents of the ‘heartbreak’ that follows failing to vaccinate children as he throws his support behind the Daily Mail’s campaign.
The billionaire Microsoft founder says people have forgotten the death and devastation wreaked by diseases such as measles, polio and pneumonia.
Writing in today’s Mail, he describes the heartwrenching experience of watching a child become severely ill as their body is ravaged by measles.
He refers to the ‘tragic irony’ that vaccination rates have soared in developing countries while plummeting in wealthy nations.
‘I can’t imagine seeing us win that fight in one part of the world, only to see us start losing it in another,’ he adds.
The Mail launched its Give Children Their Jabs campaign last month after a Government report revealed uptake had fallen for all ten routine childhood vaccinations.
Health officials are particularly worried about MMR vaccination rates, which have slipped to their lowest level for seven years. Mr Gates said: ‘Like others involved in the Mail’s campaign, I am concerned about the decline in Britain’s immunisation rates.’
The 64-year-old has spent years championing the importance of vaccinations through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is devoted to improving health in developing countries.
Mr Gates, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of around £83billion, has donated billions of pounds to Gavi – an organisation which buys vaccines for children in poor countries. He is the latest influential health leader to back the Daily Mail’s campaign to vaccinate every child. Others include Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Simon Stevens, head of NHS England.
The Mail is calling on the Government to launch a mass awareness drive to reassure parents that jabs are both safe and essential. We also want the NHS to introduce reminders via text message to alert busy families of upcoming vaccinations.
Figures from NHS Digital show that only 86 per cent of five-year-olds received both doses of the MMR jab in 2018/19. This is well below the World Health Organisation’s target of 95 per cent coverage that is needed to preserve herd immunity.
Six children are admitted to hospital with pneumonia every hour amid soaring rates of the vaccinepreventable disease, NHS figures show.
Emergency admissions have risen more than 50 per cent over the past decade, with 56,000 children taken to hospital with the condition last year.
NHS Digital data shows uptake rates for the pneumonia vaccine have plummeted. Last year 92.8 per cent of children received jabs, down from 94.4 per cent in 2012/13. Analysis from Save the Children and Unicef revealed that 27 children in England were killed by the disease last year.