Letters highlight vaccine uptake drop after school changes
Correspondents describe how shifting vaccinations from school-based delivery to GP surgeries coincided with a sharp fall in uptake and warn that measles and rubella can have lifelong, devastating consequences.
Joan Stephens, a former community school nursing sister, recalls that in the 1980s she worked with 11 state schools and several private schools where a system of consent letters, follow-up calls by school staff and class-batch clinics produced 98% uptake; after the local health authority moved vaccinations to GP surgeries, uptake fell to less than 40% as letters were lost or parents could not attend.
She argues that vaccines for preschool children, including measles, should be compulsory before school admission, noting that health visitors successfully guided new mothers on when and where to vaccinate; she also describes a baby born after maternal rubella exposure in early pregnancy who had a body rash, bilateral cataracts and total deafness, and was very ill.
From personal experience, Jean Jackson writes that she contracted measles just before the NHS was established, developed serious ear infections and burst eardrums, underwent further procedures over the years and, now aged 82, has no hearing with complications; she urges people to consider vaccination seriously because measles can be devastating.
Stephen Wall recounts catching measles aged six in 1953, at a time when some parents sought childhood illnesses for immunity; his father, aged 54, had not had measles as a boy, caught it from him and nearly died, underscoring that the risk of not vaccinating extends beyond children.
Numbers cited include 11 state schools, a 98% school-based uptake dropping to less than 40% at GP surgeries, a six-year-old in 1953, a 54-year-old parent who nearly died, and an 82-year-old who now has no hearing with complications.
The accounts are letters from Joan Stephens (Liphook, Hampshire), Jean Jackson (Seer Green, Buckinghamshire) and Stephen Wall (London), recalling experiences from the 1980s school programmes, the pre-NHS period and 1953.
