The UK government is launching an intensive media and education campaign to try to regain public confidence in the troubled measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and reverse the slump in uptake.
A full page advertisement in support of the MMR vaccine will appear in the national press in the next few days. It will include a statement from the chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, promoting the combined triple vaccine as the only safe way to immunise children effectively against measles, mumps, and rubella.
The message is endorsed by a host of medical bodies, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Faculty for Public Health Medicine, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the BMA, and the Royal College of Nursing.
The newspaper blitz will be followed by a mailing to general practices of information on the research at the centre of the latest controversy, so that doctors and nurses can update the MMR packs sent out by the Department of Health a few months ago.
According to Health Promotion England, which is organising the campaign, parents with children who are due to get their jab may also receive a personal letter explaining why experts regard the MMR vaccine as the best and safest way to protect against measles, mumps, and rubella.
Last week Dr Andrew Wakefield, who first said in 1998 that there may be a link between MMR, Crohn's disease, and autism (Lancet 1998;351:637-41), published new evidence to support his claim, although commentators have said this still proves nothing (9 February, p315). The research, which was highlighted in a television programme (Panorama, BBC1, 3 February), has fuelled the media debate on the safety of the triple vaccine.
Although the latest figures on uptake of the MMR vaccine are not available, the proportion of eligible children being immunised fell from 92% in 1997 to 86% last October.
Many observers blame the way the government handled the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis for the public's mistrust of information on matters of public health. (See p 386.)