UK measles outbreak reveals need to boost child vaccine uptake

A resurgence of measles in England has laid bare the need for authorities to improve access to childhood vaccines and quell rising hesitancy towards jabs in some local communities, health experts have warned.

The Covid-19 pandemic intensified damaging trends including growing logistical obstacles to immunisation and rising suspicion about the risks injections present, according to specialists.

Cases of measles, a respiratory illness commonly found in children, have been rising in other parts of Europe, according to the World Health Organization. However, Britain’s problem has distinctive national characteristics and has fuelled growing debate over whether health services are overstretched because of underfunding.

The debate is also part of a wider European battle to boost vaccination rates for dangerous childhood diseases, with jab hesitancy stoked in some countries by self-styled anti-establishment figures and political movements.

“These infections come back if you don’t keep the firewall up,” said Heidi Larson, professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and founder of the Vaccine Confidence Project. “Other diseases won’t show as quickly as measles. But they will come if we don’t get ahead of this.”

Annual suspected measles cases in England and Wales have more than doubled for two years in a row, from 360 in 2021 to 735 in 2022 and 1,603 in 2023, according to the UK Health Security Agency, the body responsible for disease protection.

Almost 60 per cent of the confirmed cases in 2023 were in children under 10, with many in London, the West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber, the agency said. Birmingham alone registered about 250 confirmed or probable cases between October 1 and January 18.

Measles is a highly infectious viral respiratory disease that can cause brain damage and even death. In 1967, the year before the vaccine’s introduction in the UK, there were more than 460,000 suspected measles cases and 99 fatalities,…