SCHOOLBOY,
13, DIES AS MEASLES
MAKES A COMEBACK
The
Sunday Times (London) April 2 2006
Brian
Deer
A
13-YEAR-OLD boy has become the first person in
Britain for 14 years to die of measles in a sign that
the disease, once a common killer, is resurfacing.
The
boy’s death is the first since the scare over
the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine
caused a drop in immunisation rates.
The
World Health Organisation recommends vaccination of
95% of the population to ensure “herd
immunity” and prevent outbreaks of measles.
After
the MMR scare in 1998, rates fell to 80% nationally.
In some areas, particularly in London, take-up has
sometimes fallen almost as low as 50%. The number of
confirmed measles cases nationally is already 100 for
the first three months of this year, compared with 77
for the whole of 2005.
The
victim, who had not received the MMR vaccine, is
understood to have lived in a traveller community and
was already on drugs for a chronic lung condition. He
had been overlooked by health agencies. “He
slipped through the net when he was younger and never
caught up,” said a source.
The
Health Protection Agency, the government authority
which monitors infectious diseases, said that
following the boy’s death near Manchester last
month more than 100 traveller children had been
vaccinated.
“The
first death from acute measles infection in 14 years
ought to bring home to people how serious this
disease can be,” said Professor David Elliman,
consultant in community child health at St
George’s hospital, south London. “All the
evidence now shows unequivocally there is no
justification for leaving children unprotected.”
Separately,
it emerged on Friday that 32 measles cases had been
confirmed in the area of Doncaster, south Yorkshire,
so far this year. The health authority said it was
also investigating 36 suspected cases in the biggest
outbreak of the disease there in recent years.
Following the introduction of MMR in 1988,
immunisation against measles among children at age
two rose from about 75% to 92%, bringing hopes that
in developed countries measles would be eradicated in
the way smallpox has been worldwide.
However,
this success was badly damaged following research by
Dr Andrew Wakefield, a former gut surgeon working at
the Royal Free hospital medical school, London. In
the late 1990s he claimed to have found evidence
linking MMR first to inflammatory bowel disease and
then to autism. His work was later discredited.
Following Wakefield’s research, MMR take-up
slumped to as low as 73% as parents became worried
that the vaccine was dangerous.
In
the past year rates have edged upwards again
following a Sunday Times investigation. This showed
that, when Wakefield made his claims, he was funded
by lawyers who had employed him to build a case
against the vaccine before he publicly called for it
to be suspended in February 1998.
“We
have anecdotal evidence that parents are still being
put off by Wakefield’s stuff,” said
Doncaster health authority, which has also recorded
100 cases of mumps this year. “We have around
85% of children immunised, and the only way we are
going to stop these outbreaks is to get this rate
higher.”
Before
single measles vaccine was introduced in 1968, there
were commonly more than 100,000 cases in Britain
every year and as many as 100 annual deaths.
In
recent years confirmed infections have fluctuated at
a fraction of those levels: 308 in 2002, 438 in 2003
and 191 in 2004.
A
final resolution to the MMR controversy is not
expected until later this year or early next year,
when Wakefield faces hearings before the General
Medical Council over allegations of dishonesty, which
he denies.
Copyright,
Brian Deer. All rights reserved. No portion of this
article on MMR, Andrew Wakefield and measles may be
copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated or
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