Measels kills a million people worldwide each year because of incomplete vaccination programmes.
It is the fourth most common cause of death by infection, according to a leading Irish researcher.
Prof Kingston Mills of Trinity College Dublin outlined the benefits and risks of vaccines last night in Dublin during the spring Irish Times/RDS Science Today lecture. He explained how scientists are working to make vaccines for measles and other childhood diseases even safer.
Vaccines are an essential part of any public health programme, but some of the older vaccines needed replacement with safer alternatives, Prof Mills said.
The four most common causes of death from infection worldwide were gastrointestinal bugs leading to severe diarrhoea, respiratory infections, the AIDS virus HIV and measles.
Good vaccination programmes were needed in developing countries where infectious agents kill 16 million every year, he said.
The lack of take-up of vaccines was also a consideration in developed countries, however, where half a million people died each year from infections.
Vaccines in the past were made from weakened whole microbes, but modern vaccines used only part of a virus or bacteria as a way to improve safety, Prof Mills said.
The problem was that the body's immune system didn't always produce a strong response to just a part of a microbe because it "didn't see it as dangerous".
Prof Mills is working on the next generation of vaccines, which use harmless pieces of a microbe given with an "adjuvant" which strongly stimulates the immune response.
"What you have to do is add back the dangerous bit" without it being dangerous to the recipient, he added.
Bacteria produce toxins that cause the immune system to react strongly and provide very good protection against future infection, he said.
His lab is producing non-toxic copies of these bacterial products to trick the immune system into viewing the vaccine as dangerous without any risk to the person receiving it.
Prof Mills's talk is one in a series of public lectures organised by The Irish Times and the Royal Dublin Society meant to help towards a better public understanding of developments in the sciences.
