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Dept of Health

Answer

Mr. Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will establish a review of (a) the effectiveness of and (b) side effects arising from the most recent national MMR vaccination campaign. [865] Ms Jowell: The effectiveness of, and side effects arising from, the 1994 measles/rubella (MR) school-based immunisation campaign have been carefully reviewed. Copies of "One Year On", a review of the MR campaign published in November 1995, are available in the Library. The campaign was very successful. Around 7 million children between the ages of 5 and sixteen targeted and 92 per cent. were immunised. The predicted epidemic was averted. Since the campaign measles has become rare. The number of notified cases of measles fell from between 10,000 and 20,000 per year between 1990 and 1994 to 7,768 in 1995 and 5,878 in 1996. Notified cases have been tested to confirm whether they are true cases of measles using a salivary testing technique developed by the Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS). In 1996, 3,274 of the 5,878 notified cases were tested and measles was confirmed in 63 (1.9 per cent.) of those tested. The number of confirmed notifications of measles in 1996 was the lowest recorded. (PHLS "Communicable Disease Report" (Vol. 7, No. 6, 7 February 1997)). There are good grounds to believe that a sizeable proportion of the few confirmed cases arise from importations. As a consequence of the MR campaign, indigenous measles is now close to elimination. Suspected adverse reactions to the MR vaccine were reported by doctors to the Medicines Control Agency (MCA) under the voluntary `yellow card' reporting system. Doctors were reminded on three separate occasions by the Chief Medical Officer to report all suspected adverse reactions to MR vaccine. The Committee on the Safety of Medicines carefully reviewed all the reports received and reports of serious adverse reactions following the MR campaign were very rare (0.007 per cent. of all those immunised). Full information on suspected adverse reactions reported as a consequence of the campaign were published in the MCA's "Current Problems in Pharmacovigilance" (Vol. 21, November 1995), copies of which are available in the Library.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

865; 294 c174-5W

Session

1997-98

Subjects

Drugs Publicity Side effects MMR vaccine

Contains statistics

Yes