Threat Of Measles Epidemic In UK

The UK government has announced that a harsh warning about the threat of measles will be issued to the parents of three million un-vaccinated children. This step comes in wake of the danger of spreading of measles epidemic.

From the late 1990s onwards the immunisation levels of the MMR vaccine went down drastically because of unsubstantiated claims that the vaccine could cause autism. But now doctors are eager to push back vaccination rates.

Britain faces a very big threat of measles epidemic, which can result in up to 100,000 children and young people being infected.

Professor David Salisbury, director of immunisation for the Department of Health said: “We have got so many susceptible (unvaccinated) children; there will be an epidemic at some point. You cannot carry that number without having an epidemic. There is measles in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Italy- there is a lot of it about. We can either sit on our hands or do something about it.”

The NHS has already arranged for 500,000 doses of the vaccine and further one million have already been ordered to be delivered by October. Also, 150 primary care trusts in England will receive 30,000 pounds each on an average, in order to identify unvaccinated children and encourage their parents to bring them in for the injection.

There has been a steep rise in measles cases in the past few years. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) had warned in June that measles has become endemic and the number of unvaccinated children was quite huge.

London is at the greatest risk because vaccination rates are the lowest here. Liam Donaldson, the Government’s chief medical officer, said, “Measles is serious. It can lead to pneumonia and encephalitisdefine and it can kill. Around 10% of cases of measles require hospital admission and fatality rates of 1 per 5,000 are still seen in the UK, with recent epidemics in industrialised countries having even higher rates.”