Funny how the world works … take vaccinations for instance

Funny how the world works, how what you do one year turns around to bite you the next. Take vaccinations.

Despite the threat of Ebola, in the north-eastern Congo some villagers in need of inoculation are hiding from medics, fearing a nefarious government plot; medical centres have been firebombed. Meanwhile, in parts of Pakistan, teams vaccinating against polio have been attacked, even killed, amid rumours they’re quietly sterilising kids.

It seems crazy, yet when a colonial legacy is coupled with political suspicion it is perhaps understandable.

After all, fear is highly contagious … In 1998, the Wakefield report was published claiming in a nutshell that the MMR vaccine causes autism. I cancelled my boys’ jabs immediately. Fast forward 21 years and my “baby” is nearing the end of a science degree. His speciality? Immunology.

Vaccines. Ha-ha, ma. I at least accept I was wrong. As we know, or should if we’ve taken off our tinfoil hats, Wakefield was a charlatan, and yet still the rumours persist.

Yes, my son tells me, of course, vaccination carries risks, but these far outweigh the benefits. He gives me figures from the US: pre-vaccine, in 1941, there were 900,000 cases of measles. By 1997, before Wakefield, there were only 135. And that’s just measles. However, now this Wakefield generation are succumbing in nigh-epidemic numbers to measles; globally, death-rates are rocketing

. All this, despite immunisation being instrumental in fighting, even eradicating diseases, from smallpox to diphtheria, from polio to yellow fever.

In South Africa, childhood diarrhoea rates have plummeted since new vaccines were introduced in 2009.

Vaccinations have saved more lives than almost any other medical advance. Immunology is also at the cutting edge in fighting cancer, autoimmune diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, and allergies. And even when we have clean water and good nutrition – the holy grail of prevention for anti-vaxxers – that does not mean everyone else will.

I guess one of the hardest things to do as parents is to own our mistakes, especially when we have put our babies – and other peoples’ babies – at risk. Yet, ultimately, inaction becomes an action too.

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