Visible public health leadership needed to boost vaccine coverage
Public health expert Professor John Ashton is calling for local directors of public health to provide visible leadership to address the recent systematic deterioration of vaccine coverage levels. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, he describes recent falls in the uptake of other preventative programmes, including bowel, breast and cervical cancer and aortic aneurysm. This, he writes, indicates the fragmentation and weakening of the arrangements for public health, and especially the links with the NHS, since the 2013 reorganisation when directors of public health moved to local government.
With over 900 cases of measles over the last 12 months in Britain, Prof Ashton writes that the current weaknesses in the public health delivery system should be resolved before resorting to legislation. The Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, has recently suggested the possibility of fines for parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, together with a ban on anti-vaccination posts on social media.
“Part of the problem is making the seeming invisibility of prevention, visible; this requires imagination and creativity, together with leadership and the effective delivery of services.” The alternative, Prof Ashton says, is to wait for a public health disaster to shake up the inertia and the forces of darkness.
“That it does not have to be like this is shown by the recovery in the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination in the north-west of England, with one of the strongest public health systems and visible public health leadership, to herd immunity levels, following the initial dip after the publication of the claims of discredited former doctor Andrew Wakefield.”
Notes to editors
None of us is an island, especially when it comes to vaccination and immunisation (DOI: 10.1177/0141076819854904) by John Ashton will be published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine at 00:05 hrs (UK time) on Wednesday 5 June 2019.
The link for the full-text version of the paper when published will be: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076819854904
For further information or a copy of the paper please contact:
Rosalind Dewar Media Office, Royal Society of Medicine
DL: +44 (0) 1580 764713
M: +44 (0) 7785 182732
E: media@rsm.ac.uk
The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) is a leading voice in the UK and internationally for medicine and healthcare. Published continuously since 1809, JRSM features scholarly comment and clinical research. JRSM is editorially independent from the Royal Society of Medicine, and its editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi.
JRSM is a journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and it is published by SAGE Publishing.
Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 1000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. www.sagepublishing.com