http://www.thisislondon.com/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=495163&in_review_text_id=455307
MMR vaccine crisis grows
by Zoe Morris and Maxine Frith
London's MMR crisis intensified today as the capital's director of public
health, Dr Sue Atkinson, gave a stark warning that plummeting immunisation
levels could lead to a devastating measles outbreak.
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As new figures showed that half of the capital's parents are refusing to
allow their children to have the MMR booster jab, Dr Atkinson admitted:
"We have not managed to get the message across that this vaccine is
safe."
Take-up of the first MMR jab has fallen to 73.4 per cent in London, while
immunisation levels of the second booster injection are as low as 45 per cent in
some boroughs. The World Health Organisation says that 95 per cent of people
need to be vaccinated to ensure the success of the immunisation programme. The
uptake of MMR2 is just 45 per cent in Croydon, Kensington, Chelsea and
Westminster and Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth health authority areas.
Vaccination levels in London are now lower than they were in Dublin two
years ago, when a measles outbreak left two babies dead, 100 children in
hospital and 1,700 more infected with the disease.
Dr Atkinson said there are "very serious concerns" of a outbreak
of measles on the scale of that seen in Dublin. Levels of measles in Lambeth,
Southwark and Lewisham are three times higher than experts expect to see. Dr
Atkinson said: "I think it is too early to start talking about epidemics
but the situation can change."
Her warning came as new research added to the fears of a link between MMR
and autism and bowel disease. The latest research by Dr Andrew Wakefield, the
London specialist who first raised concerns about a possible link between MMR
with bowel disease and autism, has failed to prove a conclusive link.
Dr Wakefield, who was forced to resign from his consultant post at the Royal
Free Hospital in Hampstead in December, has been working with Professor John
O'Leary. The two doctors have been testing a theory that live measles vaccine
used in MMR persists in the bodies of some children long after they have been
vaccinated and leads to brain damage.
Their research, due to be published in the Journal of Molecular Pathology,
found traces of the measles virus in the bowel specimens of 80 per cent of
children with autism who were tested, but in only seven per cent of healthy
children. However, Professor John Crocker, editor of the Journal of Molecular
Pathology, said that the conclusions are "uncertain" because the
virus found was not in its active form.
Dr Wakefield's former colleague Dr Simon Murch told the BBC's Panorama:
"I have been advised by colleagues that it is better to accept that a very
few children can have adverse events than to continue to investigate if it's
going to have an impact on vaccine uptake."
Dr Richard Nicholson, editor of The Bulletin of Medical Ethics, said:
"The Government has been very foolish and at times downright deceitful in
its information."
Meanwhile, Judith Barnard from the National Autistic Society called for the
single vaccinations to be made "available to those who want them".
'We
simply don't trust Government'
Parents
flock to single-jab clinics
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