in thinking Measles can't be more dangerous now than it was 15 years ago ?

[Onajourney]

Hi

Wondering if there are any GP's out there that can tell me this ?

My eldest child is 15 and I still have his baby books and they say Measles is a mild disease and just to keep their temperature down etc, they liken it to chickenpox. I remember not being worried about it at all when he and his 11 year old brother were small.

Fast forward 14 years and we have a 1 year old who is at "huge risk from this killer disease" according our GP, but I can't understand how it can have changed so much.

Can anyone tell me, is Measles worse now than it was 15 years ago and if so why ?

Thanks

ha to mumps as a mild childhood disease - in the context perhaps of polio or other hideous diseases children used to die of, I guess it is a mild illness but as with the other illnesses on this thread, not so great to get if you happen to get mumps encephalitis (my brother), post viral syndrome (me) or be a poor adult male who catches it (my dad). guess my younger sister got lucky, she got the 'mild' bit. ds wasn't too bad with it either to be fair but I would rather he hadn't got it in the first place. he was immunosuppressed though so we never got to do his second mmr and had to rely on other people getting themselves\ their children immunised to give him protection

164,000 children died of measles in 2008

Don't sound 'mild' to me.

so you're 'yes that's true' is sarcastic? Westminster, Chelsea and Kensington are obviously very affluent boroughs and i'm quite sure many children there get single jabs. There are single jabs clinics doing a roaring trade in London you know. Where are all the children coming from if they are all unvaccinated? Lewisham for example is not so affluent, and I think there may be cultural reasons for not having vaccines, rightly or wrongly, that may be entirely separate from the topical vaccine debate, that you are not taking into account. This would certainly be true for my neigbour and her children when I lived in Lewisham.
Very odd and rather unscientific to refuse to consider that many children are vaccinated with single jabs when they are not the studies to prove for or against, shamefully.

And ofcourse if the govt offered single jabs on the NHS then those in poorer areas would have a real choice and more children might get vaccinated anyway. But hey ho.

1. surely there is not enough studies research out there for single shots. If there is real proper research, then post it.

2.It is not known exactly what has caused the rise in cases of measles, but take-up of MMR has struggled to recover from being linked to autism in the 1990s.

So true Pixie, so true.

death rates in Dublin were "higher than usual"?
really?
what is your evidence for that?

backtotalkaboutthis - I think I may have misunderstood that you were in some way addressing me, given that you quoted a large chunk of my post. I am not sure why you did this, and I was misled by it.
I haven't proposed or supported universal vaccination.
Nor have I accused anyone of "scaremongering" so I am rather surprised that you are quoting my post as if you were responding to me, which I now see you are not, in any way.

JeanandDolly: "Most measles-related deaths are caused by complications associated with the disease... Severe complications from measles can be avoided though supportive care that ensures good nutrition, adequate fluid intake and treatment of dehydration with WHO-recommended oral rehydration solution."

From the same document.

I think you may be ignoring underlying health conditinos one step too far.

Although the benefits of vaccinations are evident to see.

Sanfairyann, that was the original response to merck in 1985 I believe when they tried to introduce the single vaccine. Wrt your dad it is more serious in adults which is why I find it a bit scary that the mmr wears off and leaves people at risk when they are older.

Jeananddolly, that is tge worldwide figure. Measles is more dangerous in developing countries where malnouishment is a problem. The WHO have found that administering two doses of vitamin A reduce tge risk of complication and death by 50%

My dad is deaf in one ear from catching measles as a child.

With chicken pox, I think we should remember that it is often serious if caught by an adult. I saw a friend of mine and she had her kids with her, on the bus, and they were at the contagious stage of chicken pox. she was discussing this on the bus and an old man sat by her then said he was really worried, as he had never had chicken pox. And he was right to be worried. It could be very serious if he caught it.

So I think it is worth bearing in mind that while these diseases might not pose a high risk to your child, they could be posing a huge risk to someone else. That is not about vaccination, but about not taking your child to public places when you know they are at the infectious stage. I know that you do not know they are infectious straight away, but when you do know, keep them in.

On a separate and possibly more controversial issue, you cannot get shingles if you have not had chicken pox. So all the children who have had chicken pox (including mine) are at risk of getting very ill from shingles as a consequence of having chicken pox. I have had shingles and would not wish it in on anyone.

If we were to start vaccinating against chicken pox the purpose would surely be not to stop children suffering from chicken pox, but to stop them becoming seriously ill from shingles in the future. If a shingles vaccine is available as someone said earlier (not heard of such a thing before), that would seem more practical than a chicken pox vaccine, as it could be carried out on adults not children.

Harpsi, yours was one of a number of posts that said, don't minimise the deaths because underlying health conditions don't matter.

So I just kinda grabbed it as one of a number which would have made my point. I'm as to where you stand but I didn't want to put opinions on yr tongue, if that's what I have done.

Even more now.

Westminster and chelsea and kensington have very wealthy envlaves but also areas of extreme deprivation - to say they are simply "wealthy" is to miss the whole picture.

The 50% observed by my nursery manager ties in with the stats for the borough that I live in.

I am well aware that children do get single vaccinations. However despite the "roaring trade" I am not inclined to believe that anything but a minority of children have had the singles vacs. Whatever you say, the fact is that low take-up rates correlate to areas with the most deprivation. The reasons for the low take-up are, I'm sure, complex.

However, in my personal experience, children are going unvaccinated, rather than having singles.

I agree that it would be useful to count again with chidren who have had singles so that we have an idea of the real picture.

Pixie I am always ready to roll up my sleeves on this one.

harpsichord, how many deaths had you heard about in the years before or since in the Uk or Ireland? In the uk there have been 2 deaths in the last 17 years both of which occured in children with underlying health conditions (on immunosuppressing drugs- but I forgot that makes no difference to you) so, yes. I would say that 3 deaths in one year is more than usual!

Millyr I think you missed the post which said shingles in adults has risen since blanket immunisation was introduced in the US?

Oh yes so - for the antiMMR people - is it a positive thing that take-ups in some areas are very low?

Or not?

(Can we assume here that they are low - some would insist that vast tracts of the popuation in the poorest parts of the country are rushing out to spend all their money on jabs - which I think is unlikely - but unfortunately we have no stats. So treat it as a theoretical question)

Well with respect 'believing' and personal anecdotes are rather unscientific, aren't they? As unscientific as a parent claiming their child has regressed severely after MMR?

the only way to find out is to do a survey which includes vaccination of children with singles.

If areas of extreme deprivation are linked with poor MMR uptake, it would be interesting to look at the reasons for this. It is always the middle class mummies who are blamed for refusing to vaccinate their little darlings, but according to your argument it seems as if perhaps this is not the main problem. What then can be done?

Offering singles on the NHS would help if it were really to do with Wakefield. If it is nothing to do with Wakefield then stop blaming him.

No, I haven't missed the point about shingles in the US. I don't see how that makes it acceptable to infect elderly people with chicken pox, even though it will make them ill with chicken pox.

For you, ISNT: if it's such a chronic problem, why not allow single measles jabs?

Only time will tell if it's a bad thing or a good thing. If take up really is that low then someone ought to be doing a lot of studies right now.

On the incidence of m, m and r, and in what age groups: on the morbidity of m m and r: on the incidence of auto immune disease; on the incidences of allergic and atopic disorders; on deaths from asthma and in which age groups; on the diagnoses of autistic spectrum disorders: on relative income and disease incidence and morbidity and mortality: on nutrition levels and morbidity and mortality; on disease incidence among vaccinated groups. And so on and so forth. Then there will be a clearer picture.

There is a dearth of informatino on unvaccinated groups and health outcomes. The argument that it's unethical to put a group at risk for the purposes of research falls where you have a self-selecting group of unvaccinated.

Are these studies being carried out? If not, why not? Wouldn't you like to ese the results?

With respect you "belive" that literlly millions of famiies are opting to pay privately for single vaccinations, with nothing to back it up whatsoever.

I have stats which show low take-ups of MMR.

Plus a common sense suggestion that the people in the poorset areas are surely not the group who are most likely to be spending money on singles.

Add to that my personal experience ie that I know people who have not had MMR, or singles. And I know people who have had MMR. But know no-one who has had singles.

Then the 50% rate quoted by the nursery manager when there was an outbreak, which ties in with the rate for this borough. (Middle class mummies, if you will).

Plus the success written about in the local papers when they went into schools and offered MMR to those who had missed it (this was during/after an outbreak) and they vaccinated thousands of children.

These things added together indicate surely that there are low take-up rates.

Millyr: it was this bit:

"If we were to start vaccinating against chicken pox the purpose would surely be not to stop children suffering from chicken pox, but to stop them becoming seriously ill from shingles in the future."

If universal vaccination increases the risk of shingles in future it defeats the point. Doesn't it? That's why I thought you must have missed that information.

By that argument millyR does it make sense to vaccinate our children when they are young so that their immunity wears off and they are then vulnerable when they are older and at greater risk of complications?

164,000 died of measles and its complications in 2008.

Measles vaccination resulted in a 78% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2008 worldwide.