Immunisation

And the measles, I was, you know, just concerned from a social standpoint that basically people need to be vaccinated in order to keep these diseases under control for the good of everybody, not just, you know, for your own child. And I did feel that I had a social responsibility element to that, and that as a parent I would be very angry if my daughter was in a nursery with a lot of children who hadn't been vaccinated and it became an issue. I mean hopefully she'll be all right, having been vaccinated. But I, I think it's, you know, if the health was there and the preventative health was there, that you should take it up, provided you feel it's safe for your, you know, for your child.
 

I think they are putting their children and other people's children at risk. And it's a known fact that, that since the MMR debate mumps and measles is going up. And I can understand, I can understand people being frightened about having their children immunised because, especially if they've never had, never given children immunisation before, they, they'll be frightened about anything happening to their child afterwards. But the, the chances are very, very slim of anything happening. Yes, children can have reactions to certain injections and some people can be very poorly from it. But I think that they're putting their, yes, I think they're putting theirs and other people's children at risk from serious disease. And I think these injections are here for a reason. And it's like going back in time really. And, you know, the millions and millions and millions of children who have these injections, these immunisations every year all, all across the world, you know. So the chance of anything happening is very, very rare. But by not immunising your child, diseases are going to start going up again.
 

It's just so terrible that the levels of global or you know, general immunity against measles for example have gone down below protection levels. That means that even if my daughter has been immunised, she might be exposed to the virus. She, well, because she has been immunised she will be probably safe. But other children, who haven't yet been immunised because they haven't reached the age when they can be immunised, MMR cannot be given before 1 year old. But if there are more and more children in the community that haven't been immunised because the parents thought that vaccine wasn't good, that makes, that increases the chances for children whose, whose parents will give them the vaccine a bit later on when they get to 1 or more, that these children can get the infection because others didn't get vaccinated. So I think that's terrible. I think it's irresponsible. If you take a decision on your life or your child's life, because you are the parent, you should also consider others. And this is a matter of public health and that's why I'm surprised that the government doesn't have a more strict position about this.  
 

Well, I think the issue of herd immunity tends to be rather disparaged by anti-immunisation campaigners. 'Oh' they're sort of saying, 'Oh, you know, it's treating us like animals'. Well of course in terms of infectious diseases we are like animals. It's a biological problem. And if you've got a low level of immunity in the community as a whole then it creates vulnerability. And, and the particular problem that creates of course is the vulnerability to the more susceptible individuals. And children who can't receive immunisations for some reason, because they're having treatment for some malignant condition or some way their immunity is compromised and therefore they can't receive a vaccine like MMR, they're highly dependent upon the herd immunity. Because if the herd immunity drops they're much more likely to get it, I mean we've already seen in London a couple of cases of children who've got measles encephalitis, which they may not have got if the herd immunity had been maintained at a higher level. So that's a very real consideration.
 

I felt quite, in a way quite strongly about having children immunised in order to I guess protect the wider public. I know it, it's a bit more difficult when they're, when it's your own child and you're looking at, you know, a very personal thing. You're obviously not going to want to do them any harm. But I think in general they have been of great benefit and have really, I don't know, stopped a lot of people dying from things that are very, very preventable. My husband's brother was very, very sick with measles. So for something that as I say so preventable, it just seems, seemed to me a, quite a natural and obvious way to protect your children against something that they didn't really need to be battling against.
 

I think also I, it's a, I see it as a little bit of a, as a responsibility to, it's not just about your child. You know, it's one of these things that it's like the Prisoner's Dilemma, if we all stop vaccinating, vaccinating these diseases would come back within, you know, within years we'd be, we'd be back to sort of Victorian kind of children falling ill from all these communicable, and I don't, I'm not sure, I think people seem to have a, sometimes a bit of a short memory about how much child, childhood health has improved in the UK and how large a part in, you know, injections have played immunisations have played in that. And, yeah, it's a shame, which just shows you how, you know, we're living in such kind of privileged times that we can even afford to think about, you know, whether or not to get our kids injections. Because before this, when, you know, it was just a real privilege to be able to protect your child like that.
 

I believe there's some evidence that these diseases were actually beginning to die out and lessen anyway. And I personally feel that perhaps the, there should be education for parents in actually helping to boost the children's immune systems and actually putting energies into that and, and good hygiene and so on, so that the community benefits that way. I can, I can fully see, I know people have used the argument to say that, you know, 'Okay, so you're actually benefiting from us having our children immunised because that's keeping the disease rate lower'. But I've balanced that as I've said with the fact that I believe that the, that the diseases were, although still about, still around, people are getting them less anyway.