Expert blames ‘yummy mummies’ for spreading fear of polio vaccinations
A VIRUS expert has blamed ill-informed ‘yummy mummies’, ‘conspiracy cranks’ and ‘right-on’ middle-class families for spreading a fear of vaccines amid a new outbreak of polio.
Professor Hugh Pennington warned that take-up rates for the polio jab have fallen in parts of the country for a number of reasons, including the ‘dangerous’ views espoused by well-todo households.
He also said that distrust of vaccines among certain ethnic minorities communities has exacerbated the problem.
The emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen said distrust of vaccines remains an issue ‘partly because of the disinformation campaign against vaccines led by deluded conspiracy cranks and right-on middle-class households’. He added: ‘But anti-vaxx zealots can be found right across society and, since the advent of Covid, they have been able to exert a disturbing influence, helped by social media.
‘The outright anti-Establishment warriors are often joined by affluent metropolitan liberals and so-called “yummy mummies” whose attachment to organic lifestyles leads them to oppose the idea of putting anything “unnatural” in their children’s bodies. Their belief system is dangerous, not just to their families but to the public.’
This week, the UK Health Security Agency declared a national incident after detecting samples of poliovirus at a London waste water site. It warned the deadly virus is likely to be circulating for the first time in almost 40 years, with the last confirmed case in 1984.
Vaccine uptake rates in England vary from a low of 55.8 per cent in the London borough of Camden to a high of 96 per cent in County Durham, in north east England. Kripen Dhrona, chief executive of the British Polio Fellowship, said: ‘We need to increase vaccination rates to limit the spread of the virus.
‘We would like to see the government working with social media companies to crack down on misinformation and build confidence.
‘I would urge parents to vaccinate their children.’