Soaring cases of measles in Europe and the U.S. are being blamed on ‘anti-vax’ parents who won’t let their children have routine jabs in the belief that it overloads the immune system. SASHA WALTON, 28, a research scientist in London, recently learned that she’d missed out on key childhood vaccinations, putting her — and any children she might have — at risk, as she reveals here . . .
Maybe it was the fact that I was now 28 and the prospect of having a child didn’t seem so distant. Perhaps it was because my father had recently read that there had been a rise in outbreaks of measles.
But, six months ago, quite out of the blue, he told me that I had not been vaccinated as a child. ‘If you are looking to have children one day, make sure you get your MMR vaccine,’ he said.
I was confused. Why wouldn’t I have had my MMR [a vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella]?
Sasha Walton, 28, a research scientist in London, recently learned that she’d missed out on key childhood vaccinations, putting her — and any children she might have — at risk (file photo)
Growing up in Bristol in the Nineties and early 2000s, I assumed that I’d been immunised against the major illnesses with routine vaccinations as a child.
I was born in 1991, a full seven years before Andrew Wakefield suggested a (disproved) link between autism and the MMR jab. But, already, the ‘anti-vax’ movement was making some noise about the safety of vaccines — and my mother fell into the trap as a ‘concerned’ mum who didn’t want anything bad to happen to her young child.
And that, it turned out, included not giving me childhood vaccinations.
My mother was a full-time mum with no background in science. But my father and I have a shared interest in biology and medicine, both with backgrounds in life sciences — and I was confident he’d know the dangers of not immunising.
Throughout my education, I was taught the importance of vaccination in protecting us from disease, and I just assumed he had felt the same.
But, while he insisted that he’d wanted me to have all my immunisations when I was young, he explained it was my mother who had usually taken me to doctors’ appointments — and so he could not be confident that I was protected and now wanted me to get checked.
And, according to medical professionals I’ve spoken to since, I’m certainly not in a unique position.
Indeed, in a story that’s made headlines in the U.S., Ethan Lindenberger, an 18-year-old student from Ohio, has recently been vaccinated against the wishes of his anti-vaxxer mother.
A few months ago, he approached his GP, who gave him the jabs. His mother responded by calling his decision to be immunised ‘insulting’ and a ‘slap in the face’.
Ethan has four younger siblings, including a two-year-old sister, who he fears won’t be vaccinated. ‘It breaks my heart that she could get measles and she’d be done,’ he has said.
I was born in 1991, a full seven years before Andrew Wakefield suggested a (disproved) link between autism and the MMR jab. But, already, the ‘anti-vax’ movement was making some noise
Suddenly, I found myself in the same position as Ethan: shocked, angry and very frustrated that I could have been put in danger. It felt as if I had missed out on something that is a human right.
Surely any parent who wants to be a good parent would have given their child those vaccines?
I called my GP to check her records, which showed that I had missed out on rather a lot of vaccinations: MMR, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, meningitis as a baby and HPV when I was a teenager. I’d had none of them.
The GP was amazed I hadn’t suffered with any serious illnesses as a result.
It’s also horrifying for me to think that I could have ended up with German measles while pregnant and my baby could have been born with abnormalities. I could have picked up tetanus from a cut or a dog bite; polio, which is life-threatening; or meningitis as a university student, which can also be fatal or cause brain damage.
The fact that I hadn’t got any of these illnesses was no doubt down to herd immunity — created by people who have been immunised. It protects those who haven’t.
It takes 95 per cent vaccine coverage to keep measles at bay, yet immunisation rates in the UK dropped to 80 per cent at one point and, in some areas of London, as few as 65 per cent of children had the jab.
As a result, measles cases rose sharply between 2001 and 2013 — when I was in my teens and early 20s — so I feel incredibly lucky not to have caught it, as measles can be very dangerous.
