It is unfathomable how in this day and age some parents have not had their children vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, one of the fundamental vaccinations all children are meant to be given.

The issue has come to the fore once again after an outbreak of measles in Europe led the local health authorities to write to doctors to warn them of the European outbreak and to take precautionary measures to prevent it from spreading further in Malta.

Since then, a good number of parents have reportedly rushed to have their children vaccinated.

But the question here has to be asked: why all the rush now?

The MMR vaccine is one of the most important inoculations for children. It is administered when the child is about 13 months and a booster dose is administered at around three to four years of age. It is as simple as that, once a child has had two vaccinations they are considered to be immune.

And the only way the government could make it easier for parents would be for it to send doctors to people’s home to give children the injection. At childbirth parents are given that green booklet, a ‘guide to your child’s health’ of sorts, which gives new parents step-by-step instructions on when the newborn will have to have his or her inoculations and what injections they will need to have.

Plus, those injections are free of charge at the National Immunisation Centre in Floriana.

As such, there can be two reasons for the folly of not vaccinating your child against MMR – ignorance through neglect or ignorance through misinformation. Frankly, it is difficult to determine which is the worse of the two afflictions.

Starting with the second affliction, there are still, somewhat strangely, a number of oddballs around, and not only in Malta by any stretch of the imagination, who still give credence to that 1998 false MMR report that has been thoroughly discredited and debunked.

In 1998, The Lancet published a study, led by Dr Andrew Wakefield, which linked the vaccination to autism and bowel disease. The doctor has since faced accusations of a conflict of interest – he was in the pay of solicitors who were acting for parents who believed their children had been harmed by MMR.

In 2010, The Lancet issued a full retraction of the paper, explaining it had accepted that claims made by the researchers were ‘false’.

Moreover, contracting the three diseases for which the vaccine serves to prevent may have serious consequences that could lead to permanent disabilities and even death and any decision against giving the vaccine is most definitely not in children’s best interests.

But, along with the flat-earthers, they are still very present across the social media crying bloody murder over the vaccine.

Do not be fooled and do not rely on social media for information. Talk to your doctor if you really have any hang-ups about vaccinating your child. This is your child’s very health at stake, and not some post-truth pick and choose the truth game.

But then again, we are not entirely sure that some parent’s choice to not vaccinate is not about pure, reckless dereliction of duty when it comes to their children. We have the distinct feeling that there are many parents out there that could not be bothered to follow that immunisation schedule given at the hospital’s labour ward and to take advantage of the free vaccines that the state provides.

And, sadly, it is this latter trait that appears to be the problem. The publication of Dr Wakefield’s report caused vaccination rates in the UK to plummet, resulting in a rise in the incidence of measles. Deaths were also recorded.

But back in 2013, this newspaper had carried an article with figures showing how the 1998 faux scare did not seem to have affected Malta in the same way. Between 1999 and 2012, figures show MMR coverage rates at consistently between 86 and 92 per cent of 13-to 15-month-old children.

As such, there was no major dip after the fake MMR report, possibly meaning that any lacuna in MMR coverage is more down to negligence rather that an ill-informed choice that was meant to have been taken in the child’s best interest.

If a good number of parents are negligent enough to ignore their children’s vaccination schedules, what does that tell us about other essential parenting responsibilities that are also likely being ignored?