A British public health expert had her two young sons fully immunised because, she says, there is scientific evidence in support of the benefits.
Dr Joanne Yarwood, who manages the national immunisation information programme for England and Wales, was in Dublin to speak at a conference as part of the Vaccination Awareness Campaign launched this week.
She said the difference in the British experience was that vaccination uptake levels were generally above 90 per cent, the figure necessary to protect against disease outbreaks. In Ireland it was 73 per cent in some areas. Her main objectives were always to be open with the facts, be consistent, and give scientifically supported evidence in the campaign for vaccination.
"I stress that underpinning our campaign is a whole lot of research," she said. "Everything we do we pre-test and evaluate." The tracking done was with health professionals and parents. Twice a year, a questionnaire with 150 questions was sent out to 1,000 mothers with children under two. "This gives a good picture of mothers' perceptions of immunisation and their understanding of diseases," Dr Yarwood stated.
The former nurse and midwife, who holds an M.Sc in care policy and management, said the success of vaccines had sometimes led to a decline in parents seeing the need for them.
"Young parents have not seen diseases like measles and whooping cough because of the success of the vaccines; therefore it is not in their psyche. However, something like meningitis, which has received a lot of publicity, would be top of their list for vaccination," Dr Yarwood said.
With falling vaccination rates, the diseases would come back. People were also travelling abroad a lot more and the rates in other countries of diseases such as measles were very high.