Two decades after the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine scare that deterred many parents from allowing their children to receive the vaccine, young adults at Sussex and nationwide are reckoning with the impact.
Rumours of a mumps outbreak hit Falmer in mid-March, with the IDS emailing students with a request to stay home if feeling unwell on 18 March. The school of Mathematics and Physics also asked students to wear face masks in the same week, according to students. However, The Badger was unable to find a student experiencing symptoms of mumps to comment. The University Health Centre stated that they were “unable to comment as not all students are registered [at the centre].” Public Health England confirmed that measles is “currently circulating in [parts] of the country,” but stated that mumps was not a concern at this time. This will come as a relief to students worried about the spread of the latter illness, which often leads to uncomfortable and potentially damaging complications including meningitis, which the NHS reports “occurs in up to 1 in 4 cases of mumps,” where the percentage in measles cases is much lower. If it is in fact measles that students should be worried about, not mumps, what can be done to prevent the contraction and spread of the virus?
The combined MMR vaccine is unequivocally the most effective way to prevent the contraction of all three illnesses. In 1988, when the jab was introduced, 86,001 cases of measles were reported in England and Wales alone. That number decreased by over half the following year, and was as low as 698 in 2020, when the government last published numbers of measles notifications and deaths. However, many students will be aware of the reason why those same case numbers rose and fell repeatedly from 1997 onwards. At that time, speculative ‘research’ by parties who had stock in selling separate vaccines – one for each condition, with three boosters before starting school – alleged firstly that the MMR vaccine caused a form of Crohn’s disease which could cause autism spectrum disorder, and secondly that the combined vaccine had not been tested extensively enough.
Both allegations are patently untrue: autism is not an illness like influenza that can be contracted and cured, and the combined vaccine remains the fastest and safest way to protect children from three potentially life-altering infections. However, in 1997, when the study which alleged the previously stated rumours was released, anxiety around the vaccine rose to a crescendo that resulted in the rate of UK children being vaccinated against the MMR dropping to its lowest level ever between 2002 and 2008, according the House of Commons library’s report on Childhood Immunisation Statistics. This bears particular relevance to the current Sussex cohort: most of our current undergraduates were born between 2000 and 2005. One student, who reported that they are unvaccinated due to the MMR vaccine scare, stated that they feel “a little vulnerable and scared to go onto campus… I know I’ll get more sick than other people if I get it.”
The good news for the student body is that – although it is classically administered at one year, and three years, four months – the MMR can be taken at any age, and the NHS states that protection begins “within two weeks” of the jab being administered. Material provided to The Badger by Public Health England encourages young adults to request their vaccine records from their GP, so that they can ascertain whether they have had the MMR or require a booster of it.
