Sir, – Dr Catherine Conlon, in emphasising the need to maintain high childhood vaccine rates, says that we have allowed ourselves to become complacent about childhood infectious diseases (“Childhood immunisation rates”, Letters, July 23rd).
The HSE has an excellent childhood vaccination service in every county, and advertises its service as much as its budget will allow.
I think that the main cause of decreasing vaccination uptake is not complacency, but it is that the people who have seen children die of childhood infectious diseases have, in fact, all died themselves also. No parents or even grandparents of primary schoolchildren today can recall a child or young adult in Ireland dying of whooping cough or diphtheria.
Collective memory of these diseases has been lost, whereas misinformation and deliberate disinformation about vaccination are both readily seen on social media.
The public will naturally react to what they see rather than what they don’t see.
Other countries have a programme of compulsory vaccination of all school-going children. There’s no rational reason why we should be different. Let’s start the debate about compulsory vaccination now. – Yours, etc,
Dr TOM O’ROURKE,
Gorey,
Co Wexford.