Health Scares
I watched the televison news quite bemused the other day - at the sight of families queueing up at hospitals in south Wales for their children to be vaccinated following an outbreak of measles.
Now these were all children whose parents had declined to have the MMR vaccine administered years ago - because of a health scare which linked the jab to an increased risk of autism - and led to a big drop in immunisation rates.
Public health officials estimate that around 3800 children in the Swansea area have still not had the MMR vaccine and Dr Marion Lyons - director of health protection - said:
"There are still thousands of children who have not had both doses of the MMR jab and so are still at risk from becoming infected with the potentially fatal measles virus."
The sense of panic amongst parents is understandable when you learn that the number of confirmed cases in the Swansea measles outbreak reached 588 last week - with around 20 new cases reported daily.
The MMR health scare goes back to 1998, but the suggested link with autism has long since been discredited - even though the lower rate of immunisation represents a risk to all children and has done for all those years.
Because the only way to eradicate the measles threat is to have a near 100% take-up rate - which prevents the virus from gaining a hold and spreading in the first place.
Now what I don't understand is this - in other countries parents would not be forced to medicate their children, but nor would they be allowed to put other children at risk in the way that appears to have happened in Swansea.
In other countries, America for example, parents would have the right to say no to the MMR jab - but they would not then be allowed to carry on as normal, as if there were no consequences of exercising such a choice.
Local state schools would not enrol new pupils without the required immunisation papers - because of the public safety threat posed to other children - so the question is why do we pussyfoot around these issues in the UK?
