Big bang for vaccination.

Abstract

In 1988 Great Britains health community introduced a combined vaccine against measles mumps and rubella (MMR) targeting all children in hopes of eliminating the diseases. The public health community learned that vaccinating only girls and women as practiced in the past does not eliminate the congenital rubella syndrome while rubella still afflicted young children. In the 1st half of 1988 because of an unacceptably low uptake of measles vaccine in some areas of England and Wales more than 52000 cases of measles occurred and by May 6 people died. It was estimated that at that rate these countries death rate from measles could surpass the average 20 cases/year. Therefore starting in 1988 it was imperative that all children 1- 2 years old receive the combined MMR vaccine. In addition to eliminate rubella from the 4 - 9 age group where it is most common preschool children aged 4 - 5 have been included in the target group and will continue to be inoculated for several years following 1988. An unpublished study in Great Britain revealed that this vaccine caused malaise fever rash and febrile convulsions in 1 - 2 years olds about a week after its administration. These were similar in nature time of onset and duration to those seen after a measles vaccine. Parotitis occurred in <1% of the children studied between 2-3 weeks after the combined vaccine. Early in 1987 public health laboratories began monitoring for antibodies to MMR by age in approximately 800 annual serum specimens.