ALMOST HALF of parents have some concerns about the safety of childhood vaccinations but most of them follow advice to have their children immunised, a new study has found.
The research involved questioning 72 parents attending a general practice in south Galway and was conducted by Dr Cormac Donnelly, a GP registrar with the Western General Practice Training programme.
It found that 48 per cent of parents had some concerns about the safety of their children’s vaccinations. Almost half said they had either strong or some reservations about the MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccine.
Nevertheless, almost all said they either had, or intended to get, their children vaccinated at two, four and six months in accordance with the recently expanded immunisation schedule.Support for the administration of the MMR vaccine was equally high. Most parents interviewed were female and ranged in age from 18 to 47.
These findings may reflect continuing doubts about vaccine safety following the 1998 MMR vaccine scare. Dr Andrew Wakefield, a paediatric gastroenterologist, and other researchers, claimed to have found a link between MMR vaccination and the subsequent development of autism. However, the link was later disproved in numerous scientific studies, while testimony pointing to errors in laboratory procedures during early MMR/ autism research has been heard in a Washington DC court during a 2007 action taken against vaccine manufacturers.
An anti-MMR campaign did impact significantly on the uptake of MMR and other childhood vaccines in this State in the late 1990s.
Vaccination rates have climbed slowly in the last number of years, but uptake still remains below the optimum 95 per cent needed to ensure sufficient immunity across the population.
Dr Donnelly told The Irish Timesthat if doctors had a better understanding of parents' concerns, it may be possible to increase vaccination rates. "This might be achieved by listening more and by being aware that parents have questions and fears about vaccination," he said.