Why the UK is lagging behind other countries on measles vaccinations

Independent

9 hours ago

The UK is the worst-performing G7 country for coverage of measles vaccines, as rates lag behind Europe, with experts warning declining health budgets and the spread of misinformation are putting children at risk.
Now, health officials in the UK have sounded the alarm over our waning vaccine coverage after a child with measles died in Liverpool.
On Monday, health secretary Wes Streeting said that the child's death shows the nation needs to 'redouble its efforts' to vaccinate more children and said improvements promised in the NHS's 10-year plan, such as giving parents access to digital health records, could help.
One expert told The Independent a multitude of issues have impacted the UK's measles vaccination rates, including declining public health budgets, lower access to GP services, and the increased circulation of misinformation on social media.
How does the UK compare to other G7 countries?
Data published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the charity UNICEF estimates the UK has just 89 per cent coverage of the first measles vaccine in 2024 and 85 per cent coverage of the second dose.
This is down from 93 per cent a decade earlier and well below WHO target of 95 per cent, which it said is needed to effectively eliminate the spread of the disease in the community.
And we're lagging well behind our G& counterparts, with vaccine rates in Germany the highest (96 per cent), Italy and France (95 per cent) and Japan (94 per cent)/.
The organisations warned that the global rates of childhood vaccinations are falling, with 30 million children unvaccinated.
Rates of the first MMR vaccine across the UK have been in decline since 2014. An analysis by the Nuffield Trust of 2023-24 data shows England lags behind Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on coverage of this vaccine.
Within England, London has the worst coverage by far, with just 81 per cent of children having received a first course by their second birthday. Data as of June 2025 shows that the capital accounted for 44 per cent of all measles cases.
Measles is a highly contagious, serious airborne disease caused by a virus that can lead to severe complications and death.
Dr Connor Bamford, Virologist, Queen's University Belfast, explained: 'Various conditions can make individuals more vulnerable to severe measles. This may include immunosuppressed individuals undergoing cancer treatment for example who, because of their condition, have lost immunity to the virus, even if they have been vaccinated."
He said: "We do see children and adults dying from measles in the UK and the last young person who died was reported in 2024. In 2023, we saw another child die of a disease called SSPE (subacute sclerosing panencephalitis), which is a fatal complication of measles that occurs years after an earlier infection. In 2023 two adults also died."
In the UK, immunisation against it is typically given as part of the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.
According to the NHS, around 99 per cent of people who receive the MMR vaccine will be protected against measles and rubella. Meanwhile, around 88 per cent will be protected against mumps, and anyone who does get it after vaccination will experience milder symptoms.
What has impacted vaccine uptake in the UK?
According to the Nuffield Trust, uptake of the MMR vaccine decreased significantly following a now discredited article by Dr Andrew Wakefield in 1998, which linked MMR vaccination to autism. By 2003-04 uptake of the vaccine had dropped to 80 per cent.
However, coverage then improved and hit 93 per cent in 2013-14, before dropping again to 89 per cent in 2023-24.
A recent survey by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) suggested that overall, parents in the UK have a high level of confidence that vaccines work for children, with 87 per cent of those surveyed having agreed with this.
However, vaccine coverage for MMR and other key childhood vaccines has declined in recent years, and now health officials are urging parents to get their children vaccinated.
Speaking with The Independent, Adam Finn, Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Bristol, and a member of the government's Joint Vaccinations and Immunisations Committee, explained there were several factors, including the fact that there has been a general decline in immunisation over the past 15 years, which had initially been ignored.
He said: 'The public health authority officials favour the idea that it's because there's been a waning of resource in the health service to deliver the vaccine programme, so as primary care in particular has become more stretched the capacity to chase people up and go after the people that are otherwise not getting their act together has disappeared and that's resulted in the vulnerable edge getting worse and worse.'
'The competing hypothesis, which is quite convenient for the politicians, is that it's mad internet misinformation, and in a sense, people are somehow to blame for believing it and that it's not really a governmental problem, it's myth and legend, as it were.'
'My view is that those two things are not mutually exclusive.'
He said while there are a group of parents and people who avoid vaccination, there are another group who don't do it because they're not aware, or it's not high up on their priority list.
The professor of paediatrics also suggested that vaccines, such as MMR, were a victim of their own success, with the public no longer having a living memory of the severe and life-threatening impacts of the disease.
In the 1960s, people would've queued around the block to get their children immunised because they were afraid of them dying of those diseases where whereas now they've never heard of them, he said.
Possible solutions?
One key solution is enabling healthcare workers, such as GPs or health visitors, to have conversations around vaccines with parents, says Professor Finn.
'The government has come in with a mission to solve the problem of the under-resourced health service and has emphasised the way it wants to do that is to stop people from getting ill rather than build more hospitals.
'And one of the most obvious and effective, proven and countable ways of doing that is to ensure vaccine programmes are delivered, and so I think it should be a fairly open and closed argument that this is where Wes Streeting needs to put his money.'
Where access to GPs and health visitors is an issue, experts have suggested expanding the list of places where parents can get vaccines, and information about them could help.
Malcolm Harrison, Chief Executive of the Company Chemists' Association (CCA), has suggested pharmacies could assist.
He said last year, a pilot in the North West of England allowed children aged 5 to 11 who had missed doses to get the MMR vaccine at their local pharmacy for the first time.
Experts have also suggested that schools could be an important place for children's vaccines to be accessed.