Inside Health tonight – measles.

The  references I’ve used are below.

Just over 80% of children in London have had two MMR vaccines by age 5. We need 95% coverage to prevent outbreaks.

Many other areas in England are at similar perilous levels.

Lots of people were misled by the MMR scare. There is no need to be embarrassed, it is easy to make an appointment for your child at your GP practice and have it now, even if they are now a bit older.

One of the papers below references an outbreak of measles in a school in the Netherlands where only 7% of children were vaccinated. None of the vaccinated children got measles, 37% without vaccination did.

1 in 1000 children with measles gets brain inflammation, and the death rate in developed countries from measles is 1 or 2 per 1000, and  the WHO tell us that 430 children die globally from measles each day. MMR is free on the NHS.

http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733786957

http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733756107

http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733835814

http://www.education.ie/en/Circulars-and-Forms/Active-Circulars/Important-Public-Health-Alert-2012-Measles-HSE-Letter.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12867830

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2631830/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2631830/pdf/11485681.pdf

Click to access hpr1213_cover.pdf

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs286/en/

http://cks.nice.org.uk/measles#!topicsummary

http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d5703

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-22048635

http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733819251

Click to access nhs-immu-stat-eng-2011-12-rep.pdf