To start off with I am a full supporter of childhood immunization – three of my elder kids are fully immunized. Having a mother who remembers well the polio and whooping cough epidemics of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s – and who lost some classmates and a cousin during them – she always impressed on me how lucky we modern day Mums are to not have to hold your baby in your arms choking to death from whooping cough or diphtheria. You don’t see kids in iron leg calipers any more with polio-deformed legs – do you know of a person existing in an iron lung from paralysis…?

I myself suffered complications from measles when I was two – many modern day Mums seem to see this potentially fatal disease as nothing more than a bad rash and a temperature when in fact it can and does kill. I developed pneumonia and almost went blind – I was lucky though, a child of my Dad’s friend developed encephalitis and her brain literally rotted away until she died at the age of 14. Had there been the vaccine back then no doubt at all that my parents would have had me jabbed to avoid all that.  I had my elder three kids ‘done’ with no qualms at all.

Now my two youngest are caught in this MMR business and it is ridiculous. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with MMR, I do not see enough autistic kids around to substantiate what some people say about it and plenty of kids have had the MMR jab. My partner however wanted our two youngest to have the single vaccines ‘just to be sure’ and so I went along with it – so long as they are immunized is all I care about. No problems with getting the measles vaccines but we have been waiting for three years for the mumpsvax only to receive a letter from our clinic telling us that MERCK will no longer be producing the single mumps vaccine for distribution. So no more mumps vaccines.

To me this smacks of a political move to force parents to accept the MMR jab regardless of their fears or wishes;  I don’t believe the hogwash about MMR being dangerous ( I do believe that 15 months is too young for the combined jab though and  so had one son done at 24 months) but I also do not believe that choice should be taken away from parents. The main thing is that kids are protected and there is now a real fear that parents will not immunize rather than be forced to accept MMR. It looks as though our two youngest sons will have to go unprotected against mumps for now – hopefully they will only come into contact with MMR jabbed kids along the way.