Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1104

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Publication type: news

Hope J.
Doctors' Children Avoid MMR in UK
Daily Mail 2003 May 3
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-179088/Doctors-children-avoid-MMR.html

Full text:

Two out of five children being given single vaccines instead of the
MMR jab have parents who are medically trained, a survey has revealed.
Critics claim it shows that doctors and nurses are more worried about
the possible health risks of the triple vaccination than they are prepared
to admit in public.
Their action also flies in the face of Government policy and official
attempts to persuade parents to allow their children to have the MMR
injection.
The report by private healthcare group Direct Health 2000 analysed
data for 58,000 children who have completed courses of single vaccines since
1999.
Of these, almost 23,000 had at least one parent who is medically
trained, including GPs, hospital and practice nurses, health visitors and
even consultants.
Official statistics show that uptake of the MMR injection is at its
lowest level in over a decade. One in five two-year-olds have not been given
the jab combining vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella.
Sarah Dean, Direct Health 2000 chief executive, said: “These
statistics indicate the strong pro-MMR stance adopted by the Health
Department is not believed by a large proportion of those who have to
promote it.
“It also weakens the perception that the debate about MMR is simply
the medical profession versus concerned parents when a lot of those
concerned parents are from the medical profession.”
Miss Dean, an ex-NHS nurse, added: “One GP told us that he felt
extremely guilty about bringing his son to us on a Saturday when he had been
advising patients to choose the combined MMR jab all week.”
The company is the UK’s largest provider of single vaccines and the
survey figures are drawn from its London clinic.
However, patterns at its other permanent and outreach clinics around
the UK are similar. In South Wales, the figure for the number of medically
trained parents is nearer 50 per cent.
The Government will not offer single jabs on the NHS, despite pressure
from campaigners, forcing those parents who want them to pay.
“The Department of Health has shown itself to be contemptuous of th
wishes of ‘ordinary’ parents in denying them a vaccination choice” said Miss
Dean.
“Perhaps it will be less pigheaded now it knows that a lot of the
people it pays are actively against its policy on MMR.”
A survey in the British Medical Journal two years ago found that one
in three nurses working in GP surgeries believed the triple jab might be
linked to serious side- effects, such as Crohn’s disease and autism.
It found that nearly half of family doctors and nurses were worried
about giving children their second dose of MMR.
Many parents have rejected MMR since it was linked to the development
of bowel disease and autism in controversial research findings by Dr Andrew
Wakefield.
However, the Department of Health and its medical advisers insist
major studies around the world have failed to find a link.
MMR coverage is so far below the 95 per cent recommended by the World
Health Organisation that doctors say outbreaks of measles are a serious
threat.
Immunisation rates in England and Wales fell from 84 per cent early
last year to 80 per cent in December. In London, the uptake is even lower,
with just under 73 per cent of two year-olds vaccinated.
But problems with the supply of single jabs at private clinics mean
that some of the estimated 120,000 toddlers who have not had MMR may be left
with no protection.