Measles

[alijangra]

I would be interested to know what people think of the recent outbreak of measles and the 1st death in 40 years of a 14 year old boy from measles. (not immunised, I may be being presumptuous but Im assuming because of the mmr scare.) Have many parents made a mistake by being taken in by a scare story about mmr which has actually never been proved?

[LazyGun]

There is a link to the BBC coverage of this story here ali.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4871728.stm

It would appear in this case at least that the boy was from the travelling community, which are generally less connected with local health clinics etc.
The overall immunization rate in the UK has fallen to 82% however, which is quite a lot lower than the 95% that is generally thought to be the lowest level for effective coverage in an immunization programme, so my own personal opinion is that the story about a link between MMR and autism did have a negative impact, and that many parents probably did overreact.

[alijangra]

Hi lazygun, here is the link to the outbreak in Scotland which is not related to travelling families. I know they say not to worry but I think its a bad situation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4876084.stm

[kazminx]

i dont know, when i was a wee lassie, we all got measles....we all expected it and were never scared of it...actually we quite enjoyed it cos we were off school with mum at home eating some home baking and jelly...havent times changed?

[curiosity]

I didn't have my 5 year old daughter immunised because of the research, albeit scant. My reasons were actually ( I think) well thought out, and after explaining them, my Gp and Health Visitor would neither recommend or disapprove. Hence she has not been immunised, selfish maybe. But when I weighed up the potential risks to her, as her parent I felt that the risk to her health, was potentially greater than her being the cause of an outbreak or maintaining one that proved fatal to someone. Anyway my reasons were because of the risk of Crohns disease, not autism, this is massively on the increase, and I am hearing this from all kinds of different sources, with first hand accounts, from both professionals and sufferers or families. I know the MMR is not the sole cause of this, but it is linked, and throughout my pregnancy with her I had a severe bowel reaction to eggs, because the MMR triple vaccine is egg albumin based, I decided against it for her. My older two had it.