Baby dies of whooping cough. Concerns about vaccine hesitancy.

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Article on the the BBC website today. It’s so sad.
Vaccines are probably the most important public health measure ever introduced. But they’ve been so successful that people forget how awful things were before we had them and how deadly the diseases were.

Baby dies of whooping cough after mother not vaccinated while pregnant https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2xe5l4mn5o

I think if the baby had missed the jabs they would have mentioned it, but perhaps not if baby was too young for the jab, which would be under 4 months.

This is very sad. There have always been vulnerable and stupid people in the world but social media has really compounded the problem by giving them a platform to scaremonger.

I completely agree that children who aren’t a vaccinated should not be allowed to go to nursery or school unless there is a medical reason for them not to have it.

I don’t expect prosecuting her in any way would help the situation. She will have huge guilt and it would just fuel the fire of the anti vaxers. “They’re out to get us” etc.

I saw a social media video the other day which suggested that folic acid was the cause of tongue tie and mothers shouldn’t take if (completely unfounded). No mention of the fact it reduces the rate of spina bifida significantly. Why do the algorithms let these people through but not, say, NHS reels? For example.

That’s really sad. When I started nursing - 20 odd years ago we still saw quite a few babies with whooping cough, often very poorly most recovered and went home but some didn’t, the whoop was unmistakable and we all dreaded hearing it. I’ve nursed some very sick babies with pertussis. When the prenatal vaccine was introduced we virtually stopped seeing these babies, occasionally you’d get some who had been vaccinated. Before I left acute paeds we were getting babies in again.

i am now a vaccination nurse, pre school, we do many things to increase uptake across our region we take people at any clinic so they can come on a day that suits, we will call:text to remind re appointments, I’ll move people about to fit them in and we do extra clinics. but the ones who don’t want just don’t want and nothing you can do will change that. I just wish those who don’t want would just say so we can stop calling them. There only so much we can do, the onus does need to be on parents to prioritise their kids health and bring them to appointments.

I had mine from the nurse at my GP very easy to get appt with the nurse and the jab didn’t hurt. It was quick in and out in less than 5 mins.

This isn’t always the case. I had nil reminders for either of my children. It was only because a)they were in school so got called up for routine boosters and b)before that, because I was diligent and knew what they should be having when. The NHS did not provide reminders by text, phone all, email or letter.

Social media need stricter rules anyone can put anything on the Internet and their will be thousands of gullible people who will believe it. I could post a tiktok saying kier starmer is going to start taking every child who's name begins with A and sell them to russia and people would believe it.

Texting and writing to parents directly seems like an effective way to contact parents. Are they also supposed to pop round and ring the doorbell?

As many have said, it seems taking personal responsibility for your children’s health has gone out of fashion.

I agree with this. Vaccine hesitancy in some cultures is entirely understandable. We need to do much better to reach these groups.

Surprised at people commenting they had issues getting the vaccine. I was just told to book it at my GP and it was easy both times, including during lockdown.