Measles national incident - thoughts?

[Eleano]

In light of measles (a life threatening disease) now spreading across the Midlands thanks to vaccine sceptic parents not vaccinating their children, what do you think should be done to stop this epidemic of vaccine skepticism?

Clearly the government wants to stay on the fence in case of losing more voters but if you were policy makers, any ideas on what you would do?

Let's not overlook the fact that whooping cough is also having its biggest wave this year.

Another problem is that those children who didn’t have it in the 90’s are now becoming parents themselves. So they are continuing the trend started by their parents, and often have pressure from those parents/grandparents to not vaccinate.

Well that’s natural selection for you. If people are dumb enough not to vaccinate then their kids die of measles. I suppose if you really wanted to encourage vaccination then you would tie it to child benefit.

The answer is mandatory vaccination to attend school or any childcare setting. Yes it’s punitive and restrictive but honestly I don’t think there’s any other way. From being measles-free in 2016 look at how quickly the situation has deteriorated in only a few years of sub-herd immunity vaccination rates.

Education, support and encouragement just isn’t enough.

The reality is, GP surgeries need to invest in sending out letters and texts to families of under 5s, highlighting when and where vaccine clinics are available. They need to push harder on this.
Booking has become a nightmare. Yes, there’s klinik and all that but it’s just become so hard for many people to get inside their GP practice.

I think the Covid vaccine and all its boosters has caused a sort of ‘vaccine exhaustion’. The draconian measures and enforcement of a never trialled vaccine by a government that, as has now been proven, gave zero fucks about its population, has, quite rightly, encouraged doubt and loss of faith in all vaccination programmes. Sad but true. We weren’t allowed to question the Covid vaccine. I admit, I never got the vaccine. My brother died a week after receiving Moderna. Artery burst. Bled to death in front of his family. He was out playing football with his 9 year old. I wasn’t touching the vaccine after that.

That said, childhood vaccinations have a long history backed by robust data, which the Covid vaccine doesn’t have.

You have a very good point here re child benefit.

Trying to be calm and rational with these discussions but this entire situation makes me incredibly angry and frustrated.

I suppose I could Google this! ... but if your child is vaccinated then they won't catch/die from measles? So - ignoring the fact that this is still awful - the strict anti vaxxers are only gambling with their own children's health? Or am I missing something?

Yes, I remember having this age 15. We all had it whether we had been vaccinated previously or not.

Herd immunity. Some people can't be vaccinated due to medical vulnerability and herd immunity protects them.

Vaccines need to be more accessible.

Also, with measles, I think people know "it can be bad" but they don't know about things like SSPE. I think that would push people to understand why you definitely don't want to risk getting it.

I had all 3. As did my siblings. People just don't have the understanding of how terrible these diseases cam be. There was a measles outbreak in my nephews school in the ? Early/mid 1990s and one child was left blind.
It's terrible but in reality the only thing that is going to shift the mindset is well publicised cases of extremely ill children.

Ye so agree it would be interesting to know are these children not vaccinated at all or have only had one dose of mmr?
Have they always lived here or recently arrived ?

If recently arrived then the government needs to target the campaign on immigrants to provide these children with the protection they deserve as soon as they arrive here and if it’s dc who have always lived here perhaps they could send community nurses into schools to vaccinate much like the flu vaccination programme ?

I lived in Canada and children had to be vaccinated in order to attend nursery / school. We did get an exemption for rotavirus as it wasn’t routinely done in the UK when DS was young and he was too old to have it done over there.

As a home educating parent I really don't think this is a good idea. Anti vaxxers are already hugely over represented in the home ed community. If you encourage more of those types of people to take them out it just ends up being a kind of cult and that will eventually be everyone's problem, not just home educators.

They are also gambling with the health of children under 1 who are too young to be vaccinated, and older children unable to have the vaccine for genuine medical reasons.

Can the mmr be given any younger than age 1? I’m just wondering if it can woukd it make sense to add it to the vaccine schedule earlier to protect these younger children and then to make the gap between mmr 1 and 2 smaller to have more children fully vaccinated at a younger age ?

There will be a reason it's at 1

the 'major' religions explicitly exclude medicines (including vaccines) from 'unclean' or banned items.

There were high levels of measles in our area when DS1 was young. So much so that they changed the vaccination schedule with the second MMR moved forward to 15months.
There was a lot of publicity several babies were hospitalised locally.
Did have the advantage of DS1 only needing one jab at preschool booster stage as he was highly unimpressed after the first one so pinning him down twice would have been tricky.

If they could do it a little earlier though it could immediately help such a huge group of children I’m sure the government are looking at all the options though. I was just thinking it’s such a dangerous disease if they could do that plus send nurses into schools to vaccinate it could really help as I think a big issue too is accessing gp appts and parents having time off but if catch up doses were done in school parents may be more willing

I think the hp culture has really changed since covid. The only times I have actually been in my gp in the last 4 years is for pretty serious reasons. I feel like I'm toxic waste going in that is going to kill our beloved nhs staff. Being so inaccessible doesn't help

If the pork products reason for not allowing vaccinations is correct, then one course would be to work closely with religious leaders to reassure followers that they can have vaccine without any such products being involved.

My understanding is that it can be given earlier in the event of an outbreak, but then you still need to have 2 more vaccines.

This National Measles Guidelines 2024 may be of interest as it provides details on ways to reduce risks and manage identified cases and outbreaks.

Birmingham news streams are advising that a pork free measles vaccine is available and can be requested from GPs. I know the HPT have sent out guidance to faith leaders to encourage uptake of vaccines in areas that are most at risk so faith community concerns are being responded to sensitively.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65a7a806867cd800135ae9bb/national-measles-guidelines-january-2024.pdf

You are correct.

I do feel that GP surgeries are sometimes half the problem. With my first child they were really hot on sending out vaccination appointments but with my second who coincidentally was born during covid, that is no longer done. I waited for a letter to come through for his pre school boosters but despite being sent several flu vaccine reminders which he had already had, we never received one for his boosters so they ended up being late. Obviously it’s the parents/carers responsibility to arrange them, but I do think that if appointments were actually sent out it would make a huge difference. People have busy lives, they don’t always know when vaccinations are due, health visitors are non existent past the first few months. Now is the time to advertise and send out appointments rather than sitting by and watching the infection rates rise.