MMR fears spark 'mobile jab' service

Maxine Frith12 April 2012

A door-to-door service is giving single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines to children whose parents have shunned the MMR jab.

Dr Damitha Ratnasinghe visits homes with a cold box containing the single inoculations and injects children on the spot, as clinics are overwhelmed with demand for an alternative to MMR.

He is based in London but travels as far as Newcastle, Leeds and Bristol because of fears of links between the triple jab and autism.

Despite a multi-millionpound campaign aimed at restoring confidence in MMR, hundreds of London parents travel as far as France in search of single vaccines.

More research claiming to show a link between autism and MMR has led to increased demands by parents calling for the option of single measles jabs free on the NHS. Autism Research Campaign for Health cited a study by John O'Leary of Trinity College, Dublin, which found the strain of measles from the MMR vaccine in the guts of 12 autistic children who had received the triple injection.

The group said the research raised "important questions" about the safety of MMR, and called on ministers to drop all publicity that claims MMR to be "indisputably safe". Last week, the largest-ever review of MMR concluded there was no evidence that the jab was unsafe or that it could cause autism in a small group of susceptible children.

Independent scientists said research by Dr Andrew Wakefield, who first suggested the autism link, was too small and flawed to be reliable.

But private clinics and doctors across London are still being inundated with requests for the single jabs, which the Government has refused to provide on the NHS.

Dr Ratnasinghe, a consultant paediatrician who works for the NHS at the West Middlesex Hospital, is offering the door-to-door injections as a private service. He said: "The demand is incredible. These are welleducated, well-informed parents who have read all the research on MMR and have very real fears for their children." He added: "Before I started offering this service I had a dilemma because I didn't want to undermine confidence in our health system or in what the Government was saying, but I feel that informed people have a right to choose.

"I would like to toe the line and do as the Department of Health says, but as a doctor I am committed to satisfying my patients. In no other aspect of medicine do we not give patients and parents a choice, and that is what I object to."

Dr Ratnasinghe, who began the service earlier this year, added: "I do have concerns about MMR. No one knows whether it causes autism or not. I gave my own children the MMR jab but that was before concerns were raised."

Up to one in five London parents are refusing the jab for their children and many pay up to £200 for single injections.

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