Child illness risk rising amid vaccine ‘fake news’

by NADEEM BADSHAH

HEALTH bosses have been urged to work with religious leaders to educate more British Asian families on the benefits of vaccinating their children as the numbers being immunised has fallen.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said “vaccine hesitancy” is one of the 10 biggest global health threats for 2019. It has led to a rise in measles cases – 913 infections were recorded in England between January and October last year, compared to 259 in the whole of 2017.

NHS data shows the proportion of two-year-olds having an injection against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) fell for the fourth year in a row in 2017-18 to 91.2 per cent.

The trend has been blamed on “fake news” on social media and websites, including YouTube, about the bogus link between the MMR jab and autism, while some Muslim families do not get their children immunised due to concerns about gelatine in some vaccines.

Professor Gurch Randhawa, from the Institute for Health Research at the University of Bedfordshire, told Eastern Eye: “This growing trend is due to the lack of health information accessible to the public.

“Due to previous media publicity, many people are concerned about potential side effects that may be related to vaccines. There are also concerns about the content of vaccines which may impact upon people’s cultural and religious values.

“It is imperative Public Health England actively engage with faith leaders to ensure all of these issues are discussed in an open and transparent manner.

“Parents want to make informed choices and this requires Public Health England to ensure they provide culturally competent information that sets out the facts and allays any fears or misconceptions.”

Research also shows 95.1 per cent of children in northeast England have taken the five-in-one jabs which protects against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio and Hib disease by the age of 12 months, with the figure falling to 89.2 per cent for infants in London and 92.8 in the West Midlands.

A British Medical Journal report in 2017 found uptake of some childhood immunisations in the UK is lower among those from BAME backgrounds.

The study from University College London said “factors related to ethnicity must be considered when seeking to understand immunisation decisions among parents from BAME backgrounds. Vaccination information should be targeted to address beliefs about ethnic differences held by some individuals from some BAME backgrounds.”

It added: “Parents who did not speak English were concerned their children would not get the right immunisation or would get an immunisation twice. Parents wanted information to be available in their mother tongue.”

Professor Mahendra Patel, a senior member of the South Asian Health Foundation, told Eastern Eye that better education is needed by working with faith leaders.

“It is about working with the younger generation who are making the decisions, and grandparents. They have pre-conceived ideas, be it religious or about autism – is it [information] in different languages, for different groups, on social media for different audiences, flyers in places of worship?

“Culturally we don’t like to have vaccinations – it is intrusive – but it’s about protecting their child. It is important to learn of the benefits. A lack of education and awareness compounds the situation.”

Dr Sanjiv Nichani, who works at Nuffield Health Leicester hospital and specialises in paediatrics, said: “There is plenty of irrefutable scientific evidence that the childhood immunisation programme has led to a very substantial reduction in infectious diseases, thereby leading to a dramatic reduction in childhood mortality across the world.

“While the incidence of autism appears to be increasing partly as a result of increased awareness of the condition leading to more rapid diagnosis, there is absolutely no link between the increase in the incidence of autism and immunisation programmes.

“Parents who don’t immunise their children potentially expose them and other children in the community to very dangerous infectious diseases.”

Facebook pledged in March to ban adverts with anti-vaccination content while Instagram said it will also introduce controls. Other measures include not showing misleading content on hashtag pages.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, said: “We are working to tackle vaccine misinformation… by reducing its distribution and providing people with authoritative information on the topic.”

Prof Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer, believes anti-vaccination campaigns are damaging. She said: “I don’t like it that bad science is pushed to parents. I don’t like quackery. I want them to know the truth – that vaccines are very safe that have been used for decades”