The case for vaccination

Babies get routine vaccines against a variety of diseases

A survey for BBC Radio 4's Today programme has found that three-quarters of parents think the MMR vaccine was safe.

But publicity about MMR may have undermined public confidence about vaccination in general.

A few doctors fear an overuse of vaccines, even the majority believe vaccination is the key to keeping former childhood killer diseases at bay.

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Long forgotten diseases are "waiting in the wings" to re-emerge and infect the world warns one health expert.

Dr John Clements, of the World Health Organisation, warns that failing to vaccinate children against a host of diseases will put children in Britain and the rest of the world at risk.

He said: "All the childhood diseases are waiting in the wings, just off stage and are waiting to run in again."

Dr Clements said that although better health and social conditions had cut the numbers of death from diseases like diphtheria, that it wasn't until a vaccination programme was introduced that the disease became virtually unheard of in the UK.

All the childhood diseases are waiting in the wings, just off stage and are waiting to run in again

Dr John Clements

Protecting children

He stressed that not vaccinating children could have a global impact and that in many countries parents would love to have the vaccine to protect their children like the UK.

"Vaccinations save millions of lives a year and it is certainly not true that children stopped dying of measles before the vaccine came in the vast majority of countries in the world.

"Indeed there are still about a million deaths occurring from measles simply because we cannot get the vaccine to them.

"I don't think if we asked a mother in Uganda if she wanted her child immunised against measles she would have a moments hesitation, because she would know there was a good chance it would die otherwise."

Natural immunity

But Dr Jane Donegan, a GP and homeopath, said she personally believes strongly against vaccination, believing that children should build up their own immunity to disease.

She questioned the strength of the link between falling incidence of diseases such as measles in the UK, and the introduction of vaccines.

She said a child's system should not be overloaded by potentially harmful vaccines.

"We have to look at the possibility of whether or not they have a harmful effect on the system."

"We are told not to give babies younger than six months citrus, nuts, wheat products and unmodified milk. Yet at the age of two months in our current vaccination programme we actually inject babies with vaccines which contain mercury, some of them, formaldehyde and aluminium."