UK: Parents warned over measles epidemic

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Keep 'em in fear

PLEASE add your comments to this widely read paper in the UK

Sheri

From Sue...........

" England's 150 primary care trusts will receive £30,000 each on

average – twice that in London – to identify unvaccinated children and

encourage their parents to bring them in for the

injection. "

Sounds like they 're being rounded up and herded in, doesn't it? I looked

at the PHLS figures not long ago and the numbers of children with

*confirmed* measles in no way stacked up with the figures quoted

below.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/parents-warned-over-measles-epidemic-887110.html

Parents warned over measles epidemic

By nce, Health Editor

Thursday, 7 August 2008

A stark warning about the dangers of measles is to be sent to the parents

of three million unvaccinated children in an unprecedented move to

increase uptake of the MMR vaccination, the Government will announce

today.

Department of Health scientists say Britain faces a greater threat of a

measles epidemic, which would result in up to 100,000 children and young

people being infected, than at any time for decades.

Doctors are desperate to push vaccination rates back to the level they

were before claims that the MMR vaccine could cause autism – never

substantiated – drastically reduced immunisation levels from the late

1990s onwards.

The NHS has stockpiled 500,000 doses of the vaccine with a further one

million on order for delivery by October, in an attempt to vaccinate

everyone up to the age of 18. The extra vaccine is in addition to the

supplies for the routine childhood immunisation programme.

England's 150 primary care trusts will receive £30,000 each on average –

twice that in London – to identify unvaccinated children and encourage

their parents to bring them in for the injection.

Professor Salisbury, director of immunisation for the Department of

Health, said: " We have got so many susceptible [unvaccinated]

children, there will be an epidemic at some point. You cannot carry that

number without having an epidemic. There is measles in Switzerland,

Austria, Germany and Italy – there is a lot of it about. We can either

sit on our hands or do something about it. "

Measles cases have risen sharply in the past two years. There were 1,726

cases in 2006 and 2007 in England and Wales, more than in the 10 previous

years put together, when there were a total of 1,621 cases. The Health

Protection Agency (HPA) warned in June that the number of unvaccinated

children was now large enough to sustain the " continuous

spread " of the potentially lethal virus. It said measles had become

endemic 14 years after its spread was halted in the resident population,

as reported by The Independent.

The HPA blamed a failure by parents to take their children for the MMR

vaccine during the past 10 years, after the scare about a supposed link

between the vaccine and autism.

Sir Liam son, the Government's chief medical officer, launched the

campaign yesterday by writing to all health authorities and GPs telling

them of the " urgent action " required to avert an

epidemic.

" Measles is serious. It can lead to pneumonia and encephalitis and

it can kill. Around 10 per cent of cases of measles require hospital

admission and fatality rates of one per 5,000 are still seen in the UK,

with recent epidemics in industrialised countries having even higher

rates, " his letter says. It adds that there have been two deaths

from measles in recent years – in 2006 and 2008 – after more than a

decade in which there were none.

The catch-up campaign will target all those up to the age of 18 who have

been identified from health records as unvaccinated or having received

only one of the recommended two vaccinations, normally given at 13 months

and three and half years.

Letters to parents will warn of the recent rise in cases and urge them to

bring their children for vaccination at a specific date and

time.

London is at greatest risk because vaccination rates are lowest in the

capital. In the last quarter of 2007, the rate stood at 71 per cent for

children at age two (first dose) and 50 per cent at age five (second

dose) compared with the 95 per cent coverage needed to maintain herd

immunity and prevent endemic spread.

Nationally, MMR vaccination rates fell from 92 per cent a decade ago to

79 per cent in 2004, at the height of the scare over the vaccine's

supposed link with autism. They have since recovered to 84 per cent at

age two (75 per cent at age five) but are still well below the target

level of 95 per cent.

Professor Salisbury defended the decision to offer parents the triple MMR

vaccine for defence against the single virus disease of measles.

" Exactly the same children need to be protected against mumps and

rubella. The fact we have got measles now is because it is highly

infectious but we will have mumps and rubella outbreaks.

" In 1994, when we ran a similar catch-up campaign, we could only get

a measles and rubella vaccine because [the triple] MMR was in short

supply on the world market. In 2005, we had a mumps epidemic among

teenagers affecting that same group of children who had missed their

mumps vaccination a decade earlier. That lesson is not one we need to

learn again. "

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With 19 new cases of autism a day. Why aren't the DoH worried about that

epidemic, or aren't the figures high enough yet? Is this catch-up on MMR

to make sure we have enough autism in the UK to be a proper epidemic?

Deaths after MMR never quoted and they happen, I personally know three.

The two deaths after measles were in seriously ill kids for whom the

vaccines would prove fatal. Are all sick kids now to be vaccinated?

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Posted by | 07.08.08, 09:31 GMT

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If there was no danger in having the MMR jab, then why hasn't Tony Blair

let his children have it?

Come on people, wake up.

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Posted by Alias | 07.08.08, 09:30 GMT

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G Pointon

The advice on the NHS MMR the Facts website is to ignore severe side

effects and go for a second dose. No one pays attention to parents, no

one follows up side-effects, of if they did they might meet with the same

fate as the three doctors presently before the GMC.

It was the pharma and the government that removed the option of a single

measles jab, thus inventing the alleged crisis. As to the real threat

from measles there is an absence of honest data on this. It is all

hype.

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Posted by Stone | 07.08.08, 09:25 GMT

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I would urge anyone who hasn't granted their child access to the MMR

vaccine to ignore the above posters, who are flying in the face of a mass

of far more concentrated data and considered medical opinion than that

held to " prove " a connection with autism in the first place.

MMR doubters are similar to conspiracy theorists in their faith that,

" A says it's bad, so B to Z must be wrong. "

While I clearly survived my childhood bout of measles it resulted in

extreme short sight that has handicapped me ever since.

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Posted by G. Pointon | 07.08.08, 09:12 GMT

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Hello Simon. (Ville) I'd be very interested in understanding more about

the mechanism you mention learning at university. Please would you

contact me at nemetonfoundation.org.uk? I am researching this area in

connection with autism at present. Many thanks, Poole

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Posted by Dr J.Poole | 07.08.08, 09:04 GMT

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Its strange how the facts get distorted to suit the medical professions's

current myth-making. The children who caught mumps in the last mumps

epidemic were those who had been vaccinated when younger but as was said

at the time, this had 'run out'. So the medical profession wanted to run

a booster campaign. Parents have the rigt to vaccinate or not.

Personally, I think the money should be spent on Vitamin A

supplementation for those children whose nutritional or immune-system

deficiencies may put them at risk of measles's being serious in their

case. The side effects of MMR are so devestating (and well ducumented

despite the cover-ups) that it is not worth vaccinating thousands for the

sake of a few vitamins.

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Posted by Dr J.Poole | 07.08.08, 09:00 GMT

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I read medicine at university, and the evidence clearly shows the

mechanism by which the MMR vaccine can cause a severe adverse reaction.

My kids will have the three vaccines. After all, I am only going what

Tony Blair is reputed to have done for his son.

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Posted by Simon Ville | 07.08.08, 08:41 GMT

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Unfortunately, autism represents a much greater threat (1 in a 100

children for life) and health officials are unwilling to talk about it

(beyond the lie that it has always been like this).

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Posted by Stone | 07.08.08, 08:27 GMT

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheri Nakken, former R.N., MA, Hahnemannian

Homeopath

Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Nevada City CA & Wales

UK

Vaccines -

http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htm

Vaccine Dangers & Homeopathy Online/email courses - next classes

Sept 08