Dangerous disease

BECOMING a parent should be a period of unqualified joy, when the only concerns are about making the right choices in bringing up baby.

In fact, as reported here today, since last week’s developments, more people have inquired about paying hundreds of pounds for single jabs for their children, and there are still many who believe that the hidden, dangerous truth about MMR is being kept from us by a conspiracy between the medical profession and the government. It is now clear, if it was not before, that there is a sizeable minority of parents in Scotland who will never be persuaded that the MMR is safe and that has serious implications for us all. The World Health Organisation insists that we need to vaccinate 95% of the population to eradicate the three diseases - which, don’t forget, can cause death and deformity. Yet Scotland falls up to 10% short of that target. The uptake rate appears to be rising, but we are a long way short of the kind of safety in numbers we need for ‘herd immunity’ and it is difficult to see how this can be achieved.

Up to now, parents who fundamentally oppose the MMR have either had to source and pay for single injections - at up to 350 per course - or gamble that if they leave their children unprotected they will not catch one of the diseases. The former option is becoming increasingly rare, with sources of single inoculations drying up - at the moment the mumps vaccine is almost impossible to obtain. A mass order for single vaccines from the NHS would soon have manufacturers vying to meet the demand, of course, and it looks increasingly sensible to offer parents that alternative, so long as they are willing to pay for a service which is above and beyond basic need. Some will see this as caving in to ill-informed prejudice but this would be a small price to pay to protect all our children from disease.