Mumps cases on the rise in England and Wales

Figure 1.

Students queue to receive vaccination against measles, mumps, and rubella at Lancaster Univerity's health centre

Credit: LANCASTER GUARDIAN

Reported new cases of mumps in England and Wales for January are more than 13 times higher than for the same period last year and are currently running at more than 1000 a week.

Confirmed cases of the disease for all of last year are also almost five times higher than for the previous 12 months. Provisional figures for 2004 show 7625 confirmed cases, compared with 1529 in 2003; 96 cases were confirmed in 1996.

The Health Protection Agency says the disease is mainly being seen in the age group who missed out on full measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) protection when it was introduced in the late 1980s.

Increasing numbers of these young people, aged about 16 to 24, are now in further education, where close contacts with other students have made transmission of the viral infection more likely.

The number of reported cases for England and Wales notified to the Health Protection Agency for the first four weeks of 2005 totalled 4891, compared with 358 notifications for the same period in 2004. Between 60% and 75% of notifications for mumps are currently being confirmed as genuine cases after laboratory testing.