KMTV Health Expert Dr Julian Spinks on drop in MMR vaccine uptake

KentOnline / KMTV

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00:00The Director of Public Health at Kent County Council is warning of a measles outbreak if

00:04the uptake on vaccines isn't improved. It comes after a young boy in Liverpool died

00:10whilst being treated for the disease last week.

00:12Well for more on this and the rest of today's health headlines, including warnings about

00:16a famous Dubai chocolate bar, it's time to speak to KMTV's health expert Dr Julian Spinks.

00:29Well Julian, we'll start by talking about the measles vaccine. It's been sort of dominating

00:32the headlines, especially in the past week following the passing of this young child who

00:36was being treated for measles at the time he died in Liverpool. What's your reaction to it as a GP?

00:43It's very sad because it is preventable. If we get the vaccine rates up, particularly over 95%,

00:51you more or less eradicate it. We almost got rid of measles worldwide and unfortunately all the

00:56scares that happened with the Wakefield paper about possible links to autism, which have

01:00been proven to be wrong. We've got this drop off and in some parts of Medway we've got less than

01:0680%. So there's one in five children who are susceptible to measles.

01:10Yeah, we'll come on to some of the reasons why people may be opposed to or were sceptical of taking

01:15vaccines in the moment. But those figures to begin with, part of the warning is that we've seen,

01:21let's take Medway, as you mentioned there, in 22, 23, it was just 82.5% of children age five or under

01:29had both doses. And then in last year, so the most recent year, 23 to 24, that had gone down to 80%.

01:35So that's a drop of 2.5%. And in Kent, it was a drop of around about 1% from 85 to 84%. Now,

01:45as a whole, it doesn't seem like a lot. But when, as you mentioned, that's one in five children,

01:49it could be dangerous. Absolutely. If you look at an outbreak, it's rather like a forest fire.

01:54If the trees are too spaced out, so in other words, you've vaccinated lots of children,

01:59the fire won't move from tree to tree. The more trees you have, the more susceptible children

02:03and adults, the more things can happen. You have to remember that measles is just about the most

02:08contagious disease that we have. You have a nine out of 10 chance of catching measles if you're not

02:16protected by vaccination and you're within close contact of somebody, so within a family, for

02:21example. And in terms of increasing vaccine uptake, does it make it that ever more sort of difficult

02:26when it is young children that have to be vaccinated? Yes, there's this weird thing that

02:31people sort of go, well, if I vaccinated them and to come to harm, I'd never forget myself. And

02:36they sort of forget that if they don't vaccinate them, if we get measles coming back, one in four

02:40children who get measles ends up in hospital. And it's not just the ones who die. You get people

02:45with encephalitis, inflammation of the brain. You can have permanent damage to sight, to hearing and

02:51so on. People get a pneumonia with it and get lung problems. So it's not a nice disease at all. It's

02:57not a sort of minor childhood illness, which is the impression some people are getting.

03:00Yeah, a really nasty condition. And in terms of some of the reasons why people are opposed to

03:06vaccinations, of course, there have been conspiracy theories in the last few years. But as well,

03:12other people might say that, well, just the day-to-day busyness of life makes them forget

03:16about the importance of it. Certainly from the practices I work in, we constantly contact people

03:22whose children haven't been vaccinated to say, come in. You know, it's five minutes of your time.

03:26It'll protect your child. There are more and more people who are vaccine hesitant because they're

03:30worried. They're seeing on social media and through other sources information, which actually is not

03:35right. It gives misleading information. Why people want to spread information like that,

03:39I really don't understand. But the autism story really is done and dusted. We've got so much

03:45evidence that shows there is no link whatsoever that I think people can be reassured that's

03:49not the case. So really important. And of course, if anybody has questions, concerns around whether

03:54their child needs one, they can talk to their GP. Talk to the GP and we'll try and give you

03:57some facts and some information you can go away with.

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