HPA warns of considerable risk of contracting measles

…sent to the HPA
Please justify the use of the word considerable in your statement “there is considerable risk of catching measles if they are not protected”

There are 3 million such children made up of nearly 2 million totally unvaccined and a million without full boosters.  Actually, the confirmed cases of measles is very small at 20 per month in England and Wales (From the HPA site) so I would suggest that the chances of an ‘unprotected’ child contracting measles very small.

Please also provide figures for the “serious consequences” from measles as I can’t seem to find any.  There were just 19 complications in 2007 for mumps but it is impossible to find out the type and serious nature of the complications.  The HPA said they ” are unable to provide this information to you as it falls under deductive disclosure due to a smaller dataset, and we would be in breach of patient confidentiality if this information is disclosed.”.

I understand that the role of the HPA is to reduce the spread of disease, however, this letter implies that if a child is not vaccinated then they are at considerable risk of contracting Measles when the data does not support this.

Many thanks…

….The reply was that they were acting within national policy… well that’s OK then!

With 2 million children under 18 years old totally unvaccinated and a further million children not ‘fully protected’ with just one jab, the several hundred confirmed measles cases each year year is akin to the risk of being struck by lightening.  With 1 in 15 complications with measles reported in the Green Book, I am guessing that again, like mumps complications, the subset will be too small to release data for.  I wonder if the 1 in 15 complications are taken from the UK of the states, which is significant.