Measles finds ally in sceptical mums

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Researchers have revealed that one in eight mothers are sceptical of vaccination - just as plans are made to head off a measles epidemic by injecting tens of thousands of schoolchildren.

In the next school term, health authorities will launch a $4.5 million programme to vaccinate children aged 5-11 at school against measles, mumps and rubella.

Launching the programme yesterday, Health Minister Annette King said it was aimed at preventing a major measles epidemic recurring.

Two previous measles outbreaks occurred in 1991 and 1997.

"The cycle suggests another epidemic in 2002-03 if we don't take steps now to make sure it doesn't happen," Mrs King said.

Public health nurses will try to inoculate up to 150,000 children - the number aged 5-11 thought to have received no injections or less than the full course.

Only two-thirds of New Zealand children have been fully vaccinated by the age of 4 - a low rate compared with many other countries, and thought to be declining.

The Immunisation Awareness Centre at Auckland Medical School last year commissioned a telephone survey of 500 mothers with children under 18 months.

The results were presented to the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners conference at the weekend.

The centre's research co-ordinator, Helen Petousis-Harris, said yesterday that 12.5 per cent of the mothers were unconvinced that vaccination prevented disease, nor that measles was a severe illness.

That degree of scepticism would foil the Health Ministry efforts to reach its target of having 95 per cent of children fully vaccinated.

There was a lack of hard evidence on the childhood vaccination rate, Mrs Petousis-Harris said, but the indicators were all bad.

Audits by doctors' groups suggested that the number of parents who did not support vaccination was rising.

Interviews with groups of parents, commissioned by the awareness centre, found that they ranged from firm supporters of vaccination to "conscientious objectors," who strongly believed that vaccinations caused many diseases and that the illnesses which they were designed to prevent were either not present or could be readily treated.

"Parents need a reason to have their children vaccinated.

"They need to know what the diseases are and their potential severity, which a lot of people don't understand," she said.

"Vaccination is a victim of its own success."

Seven people, mostly children, have died of measles in the past decade.

None of those had been immunised.

Symptoms of measles, which is a virus, include rashes, fever, a cough and sore eyes. Most children do not suffer from complications, but if they do these can include pneumonia, serious diarrhoea and brain inflammation.

The free vaccinations will be given only with parental consent.

The Health Ministry says there is no evidence to support claims of a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism.

It says serious reactions to the vaccine are extremely rare, and that the risks of the disease for the unvaccinated are far greater.