Apparently children who have had good nutrition would just 'shrug it off' if they contracted measles. Why don't they say that in the UK?

[bumbleymummy]

Article is here discussing the impact that poor nutrition has on children in developing countries.

Considering that the majority of children in the UK have no problem with good nutrition (fruit shoots and Greggs aside ) why aren't parents being reassured rather than terrified into having their children vaccinated with images of coffins plastered over the promotional material?

Domestic, BF does protect against some childhood illnesses. Why do you think that is mad? I'm not sure why you think the leaflet is scaremongering nonsense. I don't think there's much there that you wouldn't have heard before from the 'breast feeding protects against/reduces the risk of' angle.

As for 'your attitude is not going to help improve breastfeeding rates' - what on earth are you talking about?

Merry, my second sentence is nothing like 'healthy eating renders vaccination unnecessary.'

I do think that saying that most children will come through measles without any longterm complications is reassuring compared to bring told 'your child could die if they contract measles' particularly when we live in a country where the chances of them dying are fairly small.

But the government don't want to reassure people that most people will live through measles. They want them to get vaccinated so that the disease is eradicated and nobody suffers complications.

What's the point of reassuring somebody that measles isn't that bad if you think that vaccination is necessary?

Maybe parents aren't being 'reassured' because if that leads to them complacently thinking they don't need to vaccinate their well-fed child (a) their child might be one of the unlucky few and (b) we need herd immunity to protect those who can't be vaccinated.

my second sentence is nothing like 'healthy eating renders vaccination unnecessary

you may not have intended it, but it does read that way. Why else would parents be 'reassured'?

I agree with this thought. Also I think if the "authorities" were that much in a flap about measles they would talk more about Vitamin A. Measles is known to deplete vitamin A and they should say - if you've got measles take a supplement, just one dose will help. Why don't they? Because they want everybody to be frightened half to death, rather than nip down to boots and buy a vitamin tablet.

"They want them to get vaccinated so that the disease is eradicated and nobody suffers complications."

It won't be eradicated, and anyway there'll still be vaccine side effects.

Merry, so you think it's ok to exaggerate/emphasise the risks so that people are scared enough to vaccinate? Fear is the way to go? Fair enough. You're entitled to your opinion.

I don't think it's right to exaggerate the risks-
But they certainly need to be emphasised. Most well nourished children do shrug off measles. Some don't. Trouble is, you don't know until too late which group your child falls into. And people forget. It only takes a generation.

Yes, in circumstances where people are put at risk because of erroneous underestimation of risk.

Equally, I wear a safety belt because I am frightened of the consequences of not doing so.

You are constantly contradicting yourself - you think it's terrible that people are being 'scared' into vaccinating yet you are prepared to make out that ff babies are dying because of not being bf .

www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-the-benefits-of-breastfeeding-oversold/

Domestic, you're completely missing the point. I'm wondering why it is apparently acceptable to scare people into vaccinating but it wouldn't be considered acceptable to use the same approach to scare people into BF. (ie. putting a coffin on the BF promotional information) FF does result in some deaths - yes, moreso in undeveloped countries but that is the same case with vaccine preventable diseases too.

Are you trying to deny that FF carries risk?

I'm saying you're completely exaggerating the benefits of bf and that the leaflet you linked to puts stats in such a way as to try and make women think they're harming their babies by ff.

If ff is properly prepared and strict hygiene is followed and babies are demand fed, etc, the risks of ff are absolutely minute.

Domestic, it's not my leaflet, I didn't write it. If you have a problem with its content or the claims that the NHS, the HPA and the WHO make about breastfeeding then take it up with them.

I think the government would argue that catching measles carries more risk than being formula fed.

Anyway, just how scary are these leaflets?

Are they as scary as that bit in Watership down where all the rabbits get myximitosis (sp?).

I have been doing this parenting thing for 10 years now, and can't remember any really scary leaflets. Maybe the midwives, Hv's and doctors can sense that I am a bit of a light weight and have been withholding the hard stuff from me.

I'm wondering why it is apparently acceptable to scare people into vaccinating but it wouldn't be considered acceptable to use the same approach to scare people into BF. (ie. putting a coffin on the BF promotional information)

there is a clear case for measles being a direct cause of death in a small proportion of cases (in the UK - large in the third world). There is not a clear case for FF being a direct cause of infant mortality in the UK.

You assert the coffin was used to 'scare people into vaccinating' - I think it was merely used as a graphic conveying one of the possible outcomes of measles.

No, it was used to scare.

Well, if reason and logic won't persuade people, then maybe.........

Going back to Crumbled's point about vitamin A, I haven't seen anything at all in the media about how to deal with a case of measles. Why is that? Shouldn't such information form part of the public health campaign?

Or would we be less likely to take up the offer of a jab if we knew how to deal with the disease? Perhaps that's what the gov't is scared of.
There's plenty of information available about how to deal with Chicken Pox.

Vitwmin A does not treat measles. People who are vitamin A deficient are more likely to suffer daly from infections like measles, but vitwmin as deficiency is incredibly rare in the developed world.

Giving vitamin A to children with a deficiency is very effective. Giving vitamin A to children who are not deficient has no effect and can, actually in the long term, in some cases, be harmful, because the body does not excrete excess vitwmin A, but stores it in the liver.

My healthy, well nourished child is not very likely to suffer long term harm from measles (though there is a real and significant-enough-to-me risk), but the baby next door who she passes it on to may have a higher risk (maybe the baby is FF). I couldn't bear to have indirectly caused the death of someone who was at high risk by not immunising on the basis that my DD would probably shrug measles off. The coffin may not represent the risk of death to your child, but the risk of death across the while population, transmitted through the pool of unvaccinated people.

' The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) issued a joint statement recommending that vitamin A be administered to all children diagnosed with measles in communities where vitamin A deficiency (serum vitamin A

Or would we be less likely to take up the offer of a jab if we knew how to deal with the disease?

The NHS has advice here - and guess what, we're all wrong (mislead by crumbles post)- they DO talk about vitamin A. It took me about one second to find this by googling 'measles treatment'.

There you go. No sinister plot to hide information and scare us into vaccination