A public health boss has warned of the catastrophic consequences of failure to vaccinate the vast majority of people for illnesses such as measles.
North Yorkshire’s public health director Dr Lincoln Sargeant issued the warning after a study revealed while the region had a higher vaccine uptake than most of the UK, few GP surgeries in the county were meeting the World Health Organisation recommendation for greater than 95 per cent of people receiving the routine childhood vaccinations.
The public health boss said high proportions of the population being vaccinated made its difficult for infectious diseases to spread, because there are not many people who can be infected.
He said only two out of 12 practices in Scarborough and Ryedale had hit the 95 per cent target, but 12 of the 22 practices in Hambleton, Whitby and Richmondshire CCG had done so. Just three of 17 in Harrogate and rural district and six out of 14 in the North Yorkshire part of the Vale of York hit the target.
This means that there is “a real and significant risk” of infectious disease outbreaks in the population, particularly for highly infectious conditions such as measles, in the future, the meeting was told.
Dr Sargeant told the county’s scrutiny of health committee as measles is one of the most infectious agents, vaccines for it were introduced decades ago which led to the number of childhood deaths from it plummeting.
He said: “While measles cases are still relatively rare, in the last few years the numbers have been increasing.”
Dr Sargeant highlighted how the Pacific island of Samoa had seen a measles outbreak over the last month that had led to 72 deaths after the vaccination rate fell to 30 per cent.
He said: “People pooh-pooh these things and you get a lot of air around vaccinations, but when these systems go wrong they can go wrong catastrophically.”
He told members opposition to vaccinations on principle was rare in North Yorkshire and when children missed immunisations it was often due to reasons such as struggling to make an appointment and deprivation appeared to play a role in determining uptake.
Dr Sargeant said vaccination uptake was also determined by how pro-active a practice is and the level of trust people had in the surgery.
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