As a mother of four boys and a GP I am fiercely pro-vaccination. My older two boys have had both their MMR jabs, and my younger two will have theirs as soon as they are eligible. I personally ended up having an MMR booster after my second son as my rubella immunity had dropped.
Why has the recent outbreak been so worrying? I suspect the headlines were so numerous in part due to the Disney association. Last years' outbreak in the Amish community felt distant to most of us, we could write it off as an isolated event, ascribe it to other lifestyle choices of the community, pretend it wouldn't happen to someone we knew.
But just about everyone knows someone who has visited, or plans to visit a Disney resort. Suddenly this is getting real and although I feel for those affected, I hope this is a good thing overall and encourages an increased uptake in the MMR vaccination.
Last year in the USA there were 644 confirmed cases of measles. This year in the month of January alone there have been 102 confirmed cases, and this outbreak is still ongoing.
In 2000 measles had been considered eradicated in the USA, but a drastic drop in vaccination uptake following the now discredited Andrew Wakefield's publication has led to a resurgence.
The vast majority of those affected by this outbreak were unvaccinated. Either those who had refused it, those who were unable to have it, or those too young to have it.
Measles has a 90% transmission rate, and a 30% complication rate. So if either of my two younger children were exposed to a case, they have a 27% chance of ending up in hospital. In 2013 globally there were 145,700 deaths from measles.
Compare this to the Vaccine Safety Datalink rates of mortality after vaccination which show no difference in mortality rates after vaccination compared to expected US mortality rates.
It really is a no-brainer-vaccinate your children people.
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