The World Health organisation yesterday urged all countries in Europe to increase efforts to vaccinate young children against measles. Measles is not just a rash. It can lead to brain injury, and in some cases, death. In just six years, there has been a 350% jump in reported measles cases within Europe – going from some 7,000 in 2007 to some 31,000 in 2013. Granted, many of them have been in developing European nations, but the anti-vaccine movement has also contributed towards this. The reasons why some people have decided against vaccinating their children are varied, but none of them are based on science. Medical professionals have expressed extreme concern at the blatant disregard of scientifically proven data that shows that vaccination is imperative if we wish to eradicate, or at least, minimise the spread of the virus before it becomes an epidemic.
Luckily, Maltese people (and foreign resident) seem to have more faith in science than the growing movement of anti-vaccinators do in the rest of Europe. 99% of Maltese resident children have received the vaccination – or a combination of vaccinations to render them immune to diseases and viruses that are once again rearing their ugly head.
The story of a pregnant British woman recently went viral after she suffered an agonising wait to see what would happen to her and her unborn child after she went for a routine check-up at her GP’s practice. She wrote an open letter to anti-vaccination supporters when she learned – from the same clinic – that an un-vaccinated child had been taken into the practice for treatment. She agonised for 21 days to see whether she would contract the virus. In the end, she did not, but she fretted and stressed and panicked, wondering what would happen to her unborn child.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, an unvaccinated adult also penned an open letter and said that she had suffered stigma and exclusion for most of her life because her parents had decided not to administer the vaccine to her. It really is a no brainer. Science tells us that vaccination is key. Science has also debunked the theories of the non-vaccinators. Since humanity developed the vaccine, measles has been firmly under control. When there was no vaccine, ethnic populations in North America, Cuba and Hawaii were decimated by the virus. There really is no excuse to not vaccinate a child against such viruses and diseases. In a world where humans are no longer as hardy and immune (due to less endemic exposure) to these viruses, we must embrace medical technology and vaccination. Failure to do so will see us return to an age where child mortality rates soar through the roof and take away lives before they have any chance of flourishing.