Hansard

I welcome the debate. As we have heard, immunisation can be life-saving. Members have talked about the devastation that can be caused by the implications of diseases that we can now vaccinate against. Richard Simpson talked about 14 vaccinations, not including the recently announced one for meningitis B. Most immunisations are accepted and welcomed and people take them up, but we have seen issues in the past. Richard Simpson also mentioned that smallpox has been eradicated because of immunisation, and we could perhaps achieve that with many other diseases, such as polio.

We have had scares about immunisations such as the whooping cough vaccine, but the worst was the MMR scare. We should not forget the impact of measles, mumps and rubella. Measles can have really dangerous complications—it can cause brain damage or death and, in some cases, a fatal degenerative brain condition can develop after the infection, which is a worrying symptom. We are well aware of the problems that are caused by mumps, which can cause deafness and infertility in men and miscarriage in pregnant women. Similarly, we are well aware of the problems that are caused by rubella. It is at its worst when a woman catches it in early pregnancy, which can result in devastating impacts on the baby. That is why people cannot receive the MMR vaccine when they are pregnant or planning to get pregnant.

Before the MMR vaccine was introduced, meningitis that was caused through mumps was one of the biggest killers of children. The fall in uptake of the vaccine that resulted from Andrew Wakefield’s discredited paper on MMR safety decreased herd immunity, and that is still the case among certain age groups. That puts babies at risk. As we saw in the Welsh outbreak, early immunisation is not possible. Therefore, although babies were immunised as early as possible, it could not be done for those who were under six months, so they were in danger.

Teenagers going to university are also in danger. The fewest children were immunised between 1998 and 2002, and those groups are now going to university, where they will come into contact with other young people. The diseases are highly contagious so, if one is contracted, the chances are that it will spread quickly through a university. Given that the symptoms are very much like a cold, the diseases can be passed on before they are identified as dangerous.

We see the impact. In 1998, there were 56 confirmed cases of measles in the UK. By 2006, that was 13 times greater, and we had the first death since 1992. In Ireland, the same thing happened, with 1,500 cases reported because of the decreased vaccination rates following the MMR scare.

It is really important that we have herd immunity and work to improve on the figures for those who missed out on immunisation because of the MMR scare. We need to consider those age groups, so I would be pleased to hear what the Scottish Government is doing to contact and immunise those groups who were missed because of the scare.

We must also learn lessons from the scare. Specialists kept trying to reassure the public regarding the safety of the MMR vaccine. Dr Richard Simpson was quite right to say that he was vilified. Anyone who tried to persuade people that there were real dangers to falling MMR immunisation was vilified. The matter became hugely politicised and a real difficulty within our system.

I ask the Government to determine how it can ensure that the health service is open and transparent about Government advice. That is paramount to people trusting it. We need to build trust in immunisation—especially MMR—to ensure that the same does not happen again.