My personal reasons why you should vaccinate

[daisymama]

Please read my blog post about this, I was left with sensoneural deafness following measles and now I worry that my youngest child is at risk from unvaccinated children because of her immunosuppression, if you are wavering about vaccinating please read
www.wasthisintheplan.com/2013/04/why-vaccination-is-no-brainer-for-me.html

I'm very sorry to hear of your health issues due to measles. I'm also very sorry to hear of your DD's problems. I really sympathise and i know what it feels like as my DD had health issues too, including intestinal ones. In fact we are just out of hospital again.

You ask why parents dont vaccinate and i will happily answer your question. We havent vaccinated DD2 because her elder sister's health issues are due to her having reacted badly to DTP vaccines.

Our doctor doesnt want either of our children to have MMR and he is even unhappy with DD2 having single measles.

So like you, my children are not protected from measles and my eldest is immune suppressed and frail.

However i do not urge other parents to vaccinate their children in order to protect mine.

I wish you and your daughter all the best. Life is not simple.

(By the way there is a fair amount of misinformation in your blog post. It is a tricky subject to get info on. However various freedom of information requests and court hearings have happened in recent years and more info is there if you dig around)

sorry my dd has health issues not had. unfortunately they are not a thing of the past! am posting from phone so sorry for typos.

Sympathies on your daughter's ill health Daisy. I hope that takeup of the vaccine improves so she's less at risk.

My sister was lucky, she didn't lose her hearing or have other long term consequences despite being pretty ill with measles. I got the vaccine so I was safe, she missed out because of a previous scare programme on the telly before her vaccine that frightened my dad. (Funny how that vaccine is the "good" vaccine now in some people's eyes?)

Thank you for sharing your story.

beachcomber - just out of interest (please don't take this as an attack) but did you get second and third opinions before deciding not to vaccinate, or is it just one doctor?

I don't need to read your blog to agree with you.

I respect the choice of a parent not to vaccinate but if you don't have a valid medical reason, your child should not be allowed to attend state schools / nurseries.

Obviously the first two posters have valid medical reasons and I'm sure the OP doesn't mean you should vaccinate if that puts your child at risk.

my whole point as I say in my final blog comment is about the luxury of choice, if you make the choice for your child (as opposed to the choice being made for you when there is a medical reason) then at least consider those who don't have that luxury - my daughter has complete intestinal failure and is under the palliative care team at Great Ormond Street as she is not a candidate for intestinal transplant because her underlying syndrome increases the risk of cancer and the antirejection drugs are not an option - it was a difficult decision for the docs not to vaccinate her, based on sound medical practice and something that was done in consultation with her whole team not the opinion of one doctor. Her early injections were given in hospital and for risky children this is an option, but as the MMR is live and she is immunosuppressed the risk of her contracting a full blown form of the disease from the immunisation is just too risky. In fact my daughter is back in hospital next month and we will review the decision in case they feel that she may cope better now - I have never written her off as un-vaccinateable (if there is such a word) and my personal advice to other parents would also be to keep checking in and make sure that the advice is given in writing whichever way - doctors have this awful habit of contradiciting eachother and also making off the cuff remarks based on their own opinions as opposed to dicussing the pros and cons with the family - I can say all of this because I have spent the best part of the past 8 years of my life working closely with some of the top paediatricians in the UK as they try and support and help my daughter. Last point - friends in the states were shocked that we even have choice if there is not a medical reason not to vaccinate, without vaccination children can be excluded from school - to protect those at risk who can't be vaccinated and to contain these illnesses...

(((Daisymama)))

beachcomber - just out of interest (please don't take this as an attack) but did you get second and third opinions before deciding not to vaccinate, or is it just one doctor?

Three doctors - GP, paediatrician and allergist. Also have recently been back in paediatric ward at hospital and they agree with current position. To be reviewed again next year.

We haven't made these decisions lightly and we constantly worry. If I thought we could continue to vaccinate and run no risk for the children I would do it tomorrow. (My eldest is vaccinated against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, Hep B, polio and Hib.)

Forgot to say, we live in France where certain vaccines are compulsory for school entry and at my DCs school you need a medical exemption from two doctors for them to be accepted without certain jabs. We present the documents at the beginning of every school year.

Must be a scary situation to be in - knowing that you can't protect your child but have to rely on others.

Fingers crossed, that maybe one day the assessment shows you can vaccinate. What is the uptake like in France? Are there similar scares like in the UK?

Uptake is high in France for most vaccinations and some are compulsory for school entry. We had a measles epidemic in 2011 with I think around 10,000 cases - we had letters from school and from the health department about it and urging people to check vaccine status. There wasn't the high feeling about it that you see in the UK though because the media doesn't whip people up into a frenzy and they don't have a Dr Wakefield to portray as a hate figure for all parent's subsequent fears.

I am not afraid of other people's vaccination status and I strongly disagree with the argument of vaccinating for the sake of others - I find it totally unethical. My family have to manage our own situation, others, especially children, are not responsible for us.