How quickly people forget. It is only just over a year since the swine flu pandemic was officially declared over, but already doctors are bemoaning the low uptake of the flu vaccination among the at-risk population.
The problem is not just affecting the annual flu jab programme. In the UK, the Health Protection Agency says that the level of measles diagnoses has risen 10-fold compared with 2010. Although 90% of two year-old children in the UK have received their first dose of the MMR vaccine, a rate of 95% is needed to prevent the spread of the disease within the community. This suggests that the level of trust in the immunisation programme is recovering in the UK, following the unmitigated disaster that was the discredited theory of Andrew Wakefield that linked the MMR vaccine to autism.
Unfortunately, the same is not true on the other side of the Atlantic. A recent poll by Thomson Reuters and NPR found that there is a still a high level of concern among consumers about the value and safety of vaccines. Of those questioned, 26.6% expressed concern over the safety of vaccines; and most alarmingly 30.8% of these were households with children under the age of 18.
Nearly one in five said they have questioned or refused a vaccination for themselves or their children, with a higher rate (28.1%) among those under 35.
When asked about specific safety concerns, 21.4% of respondents said they believe vaccines can cause autism, 9.2% linked them to cancer, 6.9% believe they play a role in diabetes, and 5.9% cite a connection between vaccines and heart disease. Overall, 24% of respondents said their opinions of vaccines have changed in the past five years, and of those, 59% said their views have become less favourable.
Even in the country that gave birth to innumerable conspiracy theories this seems like a very high level of anxiety over something that is meant to protect the youngest and most vulnerable members of society.
Generations in the US and Europe have now grown up without seeing the consequences of polio, diphtheria and tuberculosis because vaccination programmes have been effective in the past. Let’s hope it doesn’t take a measles epidemic to put an end to the discredited autism theory once and for all.