Minister considers 'all options' to boost vaccine uptake
From The BBC
4th May 2019
Health secretary Matt Hancock has said he is willing to look at "all options" to boost England's vaccination levels, including compulsory immunisation. Mr Hancock told the BBC he did not want to "reach the point" of imposing jabs, but would "rule nothing out". More than half a million children in the UK were unvaccinated against measles from 2010 to 2017, Unicef says. In March, the head of NHS England warned "vaccination deniers" were gaining traction on social media.
The health secretary was speaking after a report in The Times claimed almost 40,000 British parents had joined an online group calling for children to be left unimmunised against potentially fatal diseases such as tetanus. And in England, the proportion of children receiving both doses of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) jab by their fifth birthday has fallen over the last four years to 87.2%. This is below the 95% said by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be the level necessary to protect a population from a disease. The UK was declared free of the highly contagious measles disease for the first time by the WHO in 2017. But in 2018, it experienced small outbreaks, and in March this year there was a sharp increase of cases across Greater Manchester.
Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Hancock said: "Failure to vaccinate when there isn't a good reason is wrong. These people who campaign against vaccinations are campaigning against science - the science is settled. I don't want to have to reach the point of compulsory vaccination, and I don't think we are near there, but I will rule nothing out." He said the failure to vaccinate children put at risk those who could not be vaccinated for medical reasons. "Vaccination is good for you, good for your child, good for your neighbour and your community," he added.
[I do find it staggering that people are actively refusing to vaccinate their children. I can only guess, apart from an unfounded belief that it has a risk of harming the child (based on a repeatedly discredited report by a single doctor), that people have simply forgotten how easily these diseases spread and just how dangerous they are. Without any experience of rampant epidemics – ironically because of the positive effect of vaccination programmes! – some people can no longer see the danger, indeed the criminal irresponsibility – of not vaccinating their children. I have no issue at all with legally enforced vaccination for this sort of thing. People should simply not be allowed to put their children or the larger community at risk because of ignorance or their crazy beliefs.]
5 comments:
I agree. It is perceptive of you to point out that people of childbearing age don't remember the epidemics of the past because vaccination works! Reminds me of an early Anne McCaffrey series The Dragonriders of Pern, with a similar theme. Did you ever read those?
evolution at work; survival of the vaccinated...the U.S. is rapidly becoming a proud member of the third world community...
That is really a brilliant analogy Judy.
This is mind boggling. Here in the United States it is so much worse then elsewhere. It seems that the denial of science and reason is on the upswing. It is leading to such bad things.
@ Judy: It's the only rational explanation I can think of. I've read *some* McCaffrey but not the Pern series.
@ Mudpuddle: Indeed. Unfortunately the losers are often children who had no say in the matter.
@ Brian: It does confound me that arguably the most technologically advanced country in the world is also one of the leaders in anti-science rhetoric.
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