I haven’t vaccinated my children against measles

Charlotte Cripps, The Independent

I was always on track with both my children’s childhood NHS vaccination schedules — that’s until they reached their first birthdays. Until then, like many mums, I was just a little nervous about my little eight-week-old baby being jabbed in the thigh by a nurse with their first doses of the 6-in-1 vaccine, Rotavirus, and MenB vaccine because they cried so much and didn’t understand what I was doing to them. After each immunisation was recorded in their red plastic medical book, though, I took a deep sigh of relief. I was told to give them Calpol if they developed a mild fever, irritability, or were harder to settle — and to come back at 12 and 16 weeks for the second or third doses, plus the pneumococcal vaccine. No problem.

I was so grateful they were protected against serious illnesses such as polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and meningitis. But when it got to the next phase of vaccines, when they turned one year old, I wasn’t so sure. Like many parents, when it came to giving them the standard 2-dose MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, which has, since January, been replaced by the MMRV (also with varicella/chickenpox) for added protection against chickenpox, I felt like I needed more information. So, I turned it down. Yes — that is right. I wanted to look into other options — the single-dose jab. I felt like I wanted to research it properly. People condemned me for questioning the NHS protocol and worrying about, as I saw it, “overloading their systems”, but it felt like my prerogative to get it done privately in a more bespoke way if I wanted to.

I knew the risks, I knew they needed to be immunised against measles and rubella. Not just for them, but for other children too. And, it turns out, I was right to be worried. As we are seeing, there is now a dangerous measles outbreak in north east London, mostly affecting unvaccinated children under 10 in schools and pre-school day care, with some being hospitalised — and it’s being labelled as “fast spreading”. The UK Health Security Agency claims to have found 34 laboratory-confirmed measles cases in Enfield, and it’s highly infectious. The viral illness can spread very easily among people who are not fully vaccinated — like my children, now nine and seven.

And, according to reports in The Sunday Times, more than 60 suspected cases of measles in the area have been reported by seven schools and a nursery. A message posted on the NHS Ordnance Unity Centre for Health GP surgery said: “During this recent outbreak, one in five children have been hospitalised due to measles and all of them had not been fully immunised.” It warned parents to make sure their children are up-to-date with all their immunisations. It sent shockwaves through some of my community of vegan-loving mums, who, like me, have a gaping hole in our kids’ medical records.

While measles normally clears up within seven to 10 days, with symptoms including a high fever, coughing, sneezing and a blotchy red or brown rash, it can also lead to pneumonia, meningitis, blindness and seizures. About one in 15 people with measles can become seriously ill. Babies, younger children, and of course, pregnant women and those with a weakened immune system, including the elderly, are also at increased risk. So why, if I know all of this to be true, do I find myself in the situation of my children not being immunised?

I’m not alone in having missed the measles jabs. Just 64.3 per cent of five-year-olds in Enfield received both doses of the MMR vaccine in 2024/25 — reportedly one of the lowest rates in the UK. Meanwhile, across the UK, recent figures reveal that children being given their first MMR jab in England fell from 91.9 per cent in 2015 to 2016 to 88.9 per cent in 2024 to 2025.

The number of five-year-olds who have had a second MMR vaccine also fell from 88.2 per cent in 2015-16 to 83.7 per cent in 2024-25. And the uptake of second MMR jabs for five-year-olds has dropped significantly from 88.2 per cent in 2015 to 2016 to 83.7 per cent in 2024-25. The UK is now one of six countries in Europe and central Asia that the WHO says are no longer measles-free, the others being Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. My daughters are now vulnerable to catching it — and I’m ashamed to say, passing it on — as measles ravages through London. It’s clearly not because I don’t care about them — although no doubt many will accuse me of being neglectful, ignorant, and selfish — even a “murderer”. But it was always my intention to get my children vaccinated against measles.

I just wanted to make my own choices on how it was administered. It’s a personal choice, surely — and it would cost me £120 per jab. I was booked into BabyJabs in East London, a children’s vaccination clinic that offers a bespoke, tailor-made immunisation plan for children. Surely it’s better to respect parents' concerns — and get kids vaccinated in the way they want them to be vaccinated — than to leave them unsupported and likely to back out of them. The injections that were unlicensed in the UK, but licensed by the WHO, could be prescribed by a GP — that’s until last year, when, according to the BabyJabs website, “the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulator Agency (MHRA) announced that it would no longer permit the importation of the single measles vaccine in the UK”.

But I missed the boat. When Covid hit in 2020 and 2021 — and we were all in lockdown — I had to cancel my appointment. I never got around to getting my children inoculated against measles. I am embarassed to say that I actually forgot. Since hearing the worrying news that there is a measles outbreak that could pose real danger, I’ve been calling other private clinics, which also claim to no longer do single-dose jabs, citing “a national shortage”. I can’t get the single dose anywhere. My only option is now to get the MMR jab privately, if I don’t want the added chickenpox overload. It’s all very well to scream at me that the medical establishment knows best, and I should have had the MMR years ago, but I was also someone who also got spooked with the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.

While I went to every Covid jab appointment (am not anti-vaxx!), knowing the vaccines saved lives and lessened symptoms for at-risk groups and older people during the pandemic, including my elderly dad, I was still too anxious to give it to my children, who I saw as low risk from Covid. Like many others, I lost confidence in the government at the time. Even the former prime minister Boris Johnson was flouting his own lockdown rules and rightly, or wrongly, this bled into everything.