Call to protect your children (From Crewe Guardian)

Call to protect your children

3:40pm Saturday 27th December 2008 in News By Mark Hilditch

HEALTH bosses are urging parents in Crewe and Nantwich to have their children vaccinated as part of a mass project to halt an outbreak of measles.

Hundreds of children and teenagers have been vaccinated across South Cheshire in a battle to prevent the outbreak becoming an epidemic.

Latest figures from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) reveal that 111 measles cases were reported in the area since the beginning of October, with 31 of these confirmed by laboratory tests. Many of the others were ‘probable’ measles cases.

Eleven of the young people were sufficiently ill to require treatment in hospital.

Dr Guy Hayhurst, consultant in public health with Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT said: “The fact that eleven children needed hospital treatment shows that measles is not to be taken lightly.

“Fortunately we’re not aware of any child developing serious complications, which is fortuitous given the number of cases we’ve had to deal with.”

Dr Hayhurst said that early in the outbreak, the PCT identified approximately 10,500 children and teenagers in the area who had no recorded history of previous MMR immunisation.

He said: “We sought parental consent to immunise these children and since Monday 3rd December, teams of nurses have vaccinated approximately 2,300 of them in their schools, which is a great achievement.

“In addition, hundreds of parents contacted us to say that they had already responded to the publicity and arranged for their children to be vaccinated by their GPs.

“Many more informed us that their children had been immunised previously, even though we had no local record of it.

“We’re still receiving reports from GPs and school nurses, so it will be well into the New Year before we know for certain how many young people have been vaccinated in recent weeks, or eliminated from the list because we now know they had been immunised previously.”

Despite this titanic effort by school nurses and GPs and their staff, Dr Hayhurst said that a plethora of youngsters in the area remain unprotected against measles, mumps and rubella.

He added: “Ideally, children should be given a first dose of MMR at age 13 months and a second dose at the age of three-and-a-half.

“But as we’ve been stressing since the start of this outbreak, anyone up to the age of 18 is entitled to MMR vaccination on the NHS and this can be arranged by contacting the family doctor.

“We really hope that the parents of young people who remain unprotected will set the wheels in motion for vaccination by picking up the phone to their GPs.

“MMR is a safe, proven and effective vaccine that gives lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella. It is used in 90 countries around the world.

“Measles is a serious illness, as we’ve seen in this outbreak. It has the potential for dangerous side effects. In rare cases it can kill.”