Fears over ‘measles emergency’ with lots of of instances already recorded this yr
There are fears that a “measles emergency” could sweep the country and put increased pressure on the NHS, with the biggest outbreak in more than decade taking hold in England.
Almost 900 cases have already been recorded this year, according to the UK Health Security Agency – an absolutely massive increase on last year’s figure of 368.
Dr Helen Bedford, professor of children’s health at University College London, said current vaccine uptake figures were too low to keep the virus at bay, reports the Mirror.
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“This is the biggest outbreak of measles we’ve had since 2012,” she said.
“We’ve had more cases in the first four months of this year than in the whole of last year.
(Image: Getty Images)
“The main reason for that is vaccine uptake figures – for all vaccines, not just MMR.
“Figures have been going down very slightly year-on-year for the last 10 years. Our uptake for the MMR vaccines overall for England is 89.3% for the first dose, and 84.5% for the second dose.
“The big, important thing about measles is that it is incredibly infectious. It is the most infectious respiratory disease around and, because of that, we need to have very, very high levels of vaccine uptake. We need at least 95% for both doses.”
The key symptoms of measles include a high fever, coughing, sneezing, red and sore watery eyes and a rash that usually appears after the initial symptoms.
“To make the picture even more complicated, in addition to the young children that haven’t been vaccinated, we’ve got a group of young adults now who weren’t vaccinated 25 years ago because their parents were scared of some research which has since been discredited, which suggested the vaccine might be linked to autism,” said Dr Bedford.
“Lots of children didn’t get vaccinated then, and are susceptible.”
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