I am not sure that making immunisations compulsory, especially for state school pupils, is the way to improve rates of vaccination (Vaccine take-up: Parents who defy medical advice, 23 October), but parents ought to be legally required to acknowledge the decision they are making on behalf of those who lack the capacity to decide for themselves.
One way could be to require parents to have a meeting with a medical professional, where parents learn about how herd immunity works with reference to local take-up and risks; each of the relevant illnesses and the likelihood of complications for children and vulnerable adults; and what conventional medicine might be required to treat their children in event of worst-case scenarios. Give them 30 minutes in the waiting room with a file full of pictures and case stories – then ask them to make their decision, with the need to sign a waiver if they still decide not to vaccinate. I wonder how many of these parents would refuse conventional, presumably “unnatural”, medicine when their child is seriously ill in hospital?
I now advise friends and family to ask for the chicken pox vaccination in certain cases after my child ended up in intensive care due to rare, but medically well recognised, complications following this common childhood illness. There are good reasons as to why children are not routinely vaccinated against chicken pox in the UK, but I would want no parent to go through what we did. My child recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the care of Great Ormond Street hospital after two years, but we still don’t know what the long-term effects of the sustained brain damage will be.
I am hoping it does not take large numbers of children dying, or being left with life-changing injuries, to raise vaccination levels.
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