MMR jab should be compulsory says MP

A senior Labour politician suggested this weekend that children who haven’t completed their immunisation programme should be kept out of school. Mary Creagh, who heads up the Labour party’s manifesto group on health issues, wrote an article in the political Fabian Society magazine on the subject. She suggests that primary schools be given powers to force parents to prove that their children had been immunised before they were allowed to register their child.

‘The MMR vaccination rate is at 85% and the target figure is 95%, so it's about catching children who may have moved or lost contact with their health visitor but also saying to parents your child has a right to live free from vaccine preventable diseases,’ Ms Creagh who is a mother of two, wrote.

The article was criticised by the chairman of the British Medical Association, Dr Hamish Meldrum who told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘A Stalinist approach like this would be likely to backfire on an unprecedented scale and increase opposition to vaccinations.’ The Labour party meanwhile insisted it had no plans to make immunisation compulsory.

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