Have your say: Education key

This reader believes more care needs to be taken by health nurses in schools and clinics, to ensure that each child is treated as an individual.

In response to excellent columnist Nickie Muir, no, whooping cough is definitely not sexy, as I discovered (two decades ago) while nursing my fully-vaccinated 6-year-old daughter.

That was five years after nursing her at-the-time 1-year-old brother who, following his MMR vaccination, apparently incubated measles and went on to have three-day fevers periodically for the next year.

We did lose two of our eight babies, but that was not to childhood illnesses - it was to what were deemed to be "safe" chemicals - a herbicide and a cold-sore ointment.

When I contracted Hepatitis B unexpectedly while working in a low-decile area full of "carriers", I was advised to have my whole family vaccinated.

But by then we'd done some research and, noting that there'd been a statistical leap (of 60 per cent) in the incidence of juvenile diabetes the year that the Hep. B vaccine was introduced, I declined. I made a full recovery with my family nursing me; observed obvious rules of hygiene, and no one else caught it. Neither did anyone get a "lifetime sentence" with diabetes!

With our current high numbers of poorly-nourished and overweight children in Aotearoa, I believe a lot more care needs to be taken by health nurses in schools and clinics, to ensure that each child is treated as an individual (not part of the herd), and their general well-being and immune-status as well as whanau background taken into account before jabbing.

Yes, thank God for herd immunity and the benefit of vaccination to civilisation ... but let's be enlightened enough to give proper care before propaganda to children and parents who, in some cases, let's face it, are barely literate, let alone able to provide immune-protecting nutrition.

M Mitt,
Hokianga

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