Pricking the public conscience
?It probably escaped most people's notice, but 21-25 April was European Immunisation Week, which aims to promote immunisation through targeted advocacy and communication.
It probably escaped most people's notice, but 21-25 April was European Immunisation Week, which aims to promote immunisation through targeted advocacy and communication.
According to EUVAC.NET, an EU surveillance network for vaccine-preventable diseases, measles is a particular cause for concern in Europe, with Switzerland and the UK reporting the highest indigenous incidence. Last year saw the highest number of measles cases reported in England and Wales since current surveillance began in 1995.
It is deeply ironic that these figures should be released just as Dr Andrew Wakefield is appearing before the General Medical Council charged with serious professional misconduct. His theory linking the MMR vaccine with autism has been utterly discredited, but the flawed science lingers on in the minds of many parents, reinforced by apocryphal tales circulated by the popular media and spurious "evidence" on pseudoscientific websites.
Although MMR uptake has started to recover, the fall in public confidence in MMR caused by Dr Wakefield's "research" may take years to mend - if ever. Even the trendy and surprisingly non-preachy government TV advert will do little, I fear, to counteract years of negative publicity.
Just how successful a vaccination campaign can be is shown by the fact that there were no deaths in the under-19s from meningitis C in the UK in 2007, compared with 78 per year before routine vaccination was introduced eight years ago. Furthermore, the pneumococcal vaccine, introduced in 2006, has prevented 470 deaths or serious illness in children.
Against this background, it seems hard to credit the warning by Professor Louis Galambos of Johns Hopkins University that narrowing cost margins and prohibitive regulation could threaten the future development of a second "golden" era in vaccines (see www.manufacturingchemist.com). Political pressures to reduce healthcare costs in both the UK and the US could affect negatively the level of innovation and supply of vaccines in the future, he believes.
This is surely a case where an investment now will pay massive dividends in the future: the money spent on vaccination programmes will be repaid many times over in terms of savings in both treatment costs and human suffering.
The eradication of vaccine-preventable diseases is one of the greatest legacies we can pass on to future generations.