Why I’m grateful for the wonders of modern medicine

There was time when some illnesses spelt disaster for children, but I have learned to place my trust in experts

MY son is currently terrified of doctors, and at his age, who could blame him? In his young life, one of the particularly upsetting GP visits he’s experienced has seen his mother hold his arms in the brace position while a nurse sticks a needle into the tender flesh in each of his thighs while he howls in shock.

It’s not an easy experience for any parent, but for many of us, certainly for me, it’s normal, because I fear horrific childhood illness and will do anything to protect my son from it.

That’s the favour my parents did me and it’s one I’ll pass on, and hope that future generations will do the same.

I was reminded recently how lucky I am to be a modern parent when I read Coleraine-born author Maggie O’farrell’s Hamnet.

It tells the story behind Shakespeare’s most famous play and is set in 1596 in Stratford.

Shakespeare’s daughter Judith takes to her bed with a fever and her twin, an 11-year-old boy named Hamnet, searches for someone to help. From the outset, we’re told that one of the children won’t survive the week.

I challenge anyone, but parents especially, to read the story of devastating illness in relation to a young child and not spend the last one hundred pages of the book in floods of tears as I did, especially when O’farrell shows how a once-healthy child can be struck down when his life is just beginning and despite the care taken by his parents.

The story is an imagining of how Shakespeare eventually came to lose one of his children and is told skilfully after extensive research by O’farrell into the diseases of that age. One of them was bubonic plague, which terrorised Europe for centuries and was extraordinarily unpleasant and painful by all accounts.

The disease which caused London’s Great Plague still exists today and it’s not cured by a vaccine, instead it’s treated with antibiotics.

While it’s generally not something we in the UK and Ireland have to worry about, recent history has shown that even now-rare diseases can resurge.

After all, the UK obtained “elimination status” for the measles in 2017 and 2021, only to throw it all away when more than 200 children in England and Wales were diagnosed with it in the last four weeks of 2023. Meanwhile, three cases have been diagnosed in the Republic so far this year.

There are many things vaccines and antibiotics can’t deal with, but the elimination of MMR was a realistic target.

Now, though, in the Facebook parenting groups that often show up on my timeline, parents often post questions about the vaccine, only to be met with a host of responses that urge them to “do their own research” and to send them a private message if they have any concerns.

It’s not difficult to imagine some parents are being advised against vaccinating their kids and that’s why in some countries, Ireland included, vaccine rates against measles are dropping.

Of course, it’s always advisable to do your research and I know, like my parents, I spends hours looking for the best advice on how to overcome sleep regressions, prevent picky eating and what games to play to help your child’s mental stimulation.

But I’m a journalist who was not good at science in school. So I know my limitations in that area, namely that I didn’t spend many years studying medicine or related areas, so I’m happy to bow to the expertise of those who know more than me. It’s an easy choice if it means I can do more to protect my child because I have access to modern medicine.

After all, the child mortality rate in years gone by painted a different picture than it does now. In 1800, the rate in the UK for those under the age of five was 329 deaths per thousand births. That means that approximately one in every three children born in 1800 did not make it to their fifth birthday.

There are many factors at play which contributed to infant and child mortality. We have much more control over many of them, including our knowledge about safety in the home, what we feed our children and our living environments. But one of the biggest pillars on which the safety of our children undoubtedly stands is the vast advancement of modern medicine where something which once killed a child can now be treated and eliminated as quickly as possible in an ideal scenario.

Of course, many of us have stories in our families of children who, like Hamnet, didn’t make it to adulthood because of something which could now be prevented. Our biggest job is now to make use of our advantages.