Interview 30

Brief Outline:

For all immunisations' Followed recommendations from health visitor. Experience of her daughter's immunisations influenced her immunisation decisions for her son.

Background:

At time of interview' married, Two children, aged 7 years (daughter) and 3 years (son). Parent's occupation' Mother- Sure Start Volunteer Co-ordinator, Father- Manager (Retail). Ethnic background' White-British.

More children in her local area have had measles and mumps, which she believes could have been...

There was an outbreak at the beginning of the year, with the measles, see it's gone from the measles to the mumps, to chicken pox. So there's a lot of the same children had the same things, and I think that's so, you know those children should have been protected from that, but they weren't. I mean, even if you get chicken pox, or measles, when they've had the injections, you'll find the children are not sick with it. If you haven't had the injections, the immunisations they will, they can be, it can be potentially dangerous, obviously especially to pregnant women as well, which there's a lot of, obviously pregnant women around. 

And the children that had measles - have you seen them? How ill have they been?

There's been, there is one case that I did see and it was really quite a bad case. They had measles in their eyes, up their nose, on their tongue, in their ears. All over their body and they were really quite sick with it. But if they'd had the injection it wouldn't have been half as bad. They'd have just had, you know, the itchiness, you know, and a little bit sick but not as bad as what it could have been.
 

If you have concerns about MMR, get some expert advice.

I think a lot of it is definitely media hype, but I think an awful lot of people now are going back to the MMR, from what I've been talking to parents and things like that, because there is so many things that have come out of it. There is an increase in mumps, there is an increase in chicken pox, there's a huge increase of measles, and I think people are more scared of that now, than they are the MMR. And in a way I'm glad that they're going back to it because this will sort of stabilise all those things that could have been prevented in the first place. But I think if you've got any concerns about the MMR then you really need to discuss them with either your health visitor or your GP and get some expert advice on it.