Vaccine uptake against measles are improving, say City Council
The issue was discussed at a meeting yesterday.
Coventry City Council says uptake of the MMR vaccine amongst children is improving.
It's been said pop-up clinics at a school in the city led to the rate of pupils protected by the MMR vaccine more than doubling. Sessions in December at one of the city’s most diverse primaries led to 87% of pupils having the jab, up from 40%.
It also boosted rates of the vaccine among staff and teachers. The success of the clinic has led local health experts to consider doing this longer term, a meeting heard this week.
Pop-up vaccine sessions are now being put on in all city secondary schools and 21 primaries, and a later “wave” covering 18 primaries is planned. The push comes as Coventry tackles lower than average take-up of childhood MMR vaccines that protect people from catching measles, mumps and rubella.
Efforts to boost protection rates in Coventry come after a surge in measles cases locally and nationally. The highly contagious viral infection can in rare cases cause serious complications with babies, pregnant women and immunosuppressed people at higher risk of these.
Confirmed cases of the highly contagious viral infection in Coventry rose from zero in October to 26 by last month. And almost two-thirds of the UK’s 650 confirmed cases since last autumn have been in the West Midlands, according to the latest data.
A report for this week’s meeting said work to boost MMR vaccination rates started last summer. Key actions include an “enhanced” vaccine programme in schools that aims to boost rates among children whose parents may have found accessing primary care difficult, it said.
Public health consultant Lily Makurah was at the meeting on Wednesday (28 February.) She said for many people accessing the GP “works” and people are being guided on how to more easily get an appointment such as ringing in the afternoon. “But also there is a serious conversion to be had and that we are having at the moment about well, actually, if we’re finding that school-based pop-ups work, then why aren’t we doing that more long term?” she added.
“Especially if we have a population where, you know again, someone’s working on minimum wage or in an hourly job and they have to take their child out of school and do fewer hours so that they can go.” Ms Makurah also told the meeting that in Coventry the only vaccine offered is effectively the one without pork products in it, which she called “the game-changer.”
“Very early on we lobbied that actually we should for our area only be ordering in the version that is porcine free. So that is suitable for anyone who doesn’t touch pork,” she said.
“And once we made sure that that was in place both in the GPs and the pop-up clinics… now we’re actually really pushing that in terms of our communications to residents to make sure that they’re now aware of that as well.”.
The council’s Director of Public Health, Alison Duggal, said there are a “number of things” that affect the level of MMR coverage in communities, citing news articles and more recently Covid-19 as having impacts. “This is something we work on all the time with NHS colleagues – it’s something that has been looked at for as long as I’ve been in public health, when I was a trainee,” she said.
“It’s something that’s looked at regularly. What we’ve seen recently is because, as Lily mentioned, because of Covid and a number of other factors, it’s made it so we have lower rates than we’d like to see.
“It only takes the virus being introduced into the population a couple of times, because measles is so contagious, that’s what leads to the outbreaks and that’s why we have to do this more targeted approach. But there are general approaches that go on all of the time as well.”
The local Integrated Care Board (ICB) and NHS West Midlands lead on commissioning and delivery of the MMR vaccines. But Coventry City Council’s public health team helps make sure the plans meet local needs and the council also chairs a “Vaccinating Coventry” group originally set up in Covid-19.