UK is in the grip of a nationwide mumps epidemic

[HuckleB]

UK is in the grip of a nationwide mumps epidemic

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=24264

"The United Kingdom is in the grip of a nationwide mumps epidemic, with almost 5,000 notifications in the first month of 2005 alone, show two papers in this week's BMJ.

The outbreaks are occurring predominantly in 19-23 year olds, but cases are also occurring in susceptible children, underlining the importance of ensuring that all children and young adults have had two doses of the MMR vaccine.

In the first paper (Savage et al), researchers from the Health Protection Agency report that in 2004, the number of mumps notifications in England and Wales increased to 16,436 from 4,204 in 2003. Most cases were in young adults born before 1988, who would not have been routinely scheduled for MMR during childhood.

The highest attack rate was in those born between 1983 and 1986, who were too old to be offered MMR vaccination routinely when it was introduced in 1988, although some may have received one dose of MMR as part of a catch-up programme at school entry.

..."

[HuckleB]

1. Somewhat related...

MMR vaccine does not increase risk of Crohn's disease:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=24263

[mopinko]

2. well something sure does

i have a kid with crohn's. it is a disease of the first world. one hypothesis is that it is caused by drinking water that is too clean. shows the folly of thinking you can divorce yourself from natural laws.

[HuckleB]

3. Indeed.

I hope that the cause is found, so treatment can improve and prevention strategies can be implemented.

[TahitiNut]

5. Well, Crohn's was VERY rare in my generation ... but

... we played outside and ate dirt as kids. :silly:

While I say this with humor, I think it may be emblematic. The amount of 'pre-processed' food I ate as a child was nearly nil. Our shopping lists always included flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, and a plethora of basic ingredients for cooking. I can't even remember the last time I bought a bag of flour or a bag of sugar. For us, canned Campbell's soup (tomato or chicken noodle) was a "convenience food" -- just about the only heat-and-eat food I remember.

[mopinko]

6. it is an epidemic in kids

we are of about the same generation. it was not only rare, the average onset was much, much later, in middle age. my kid was dx'ed at 9. pediatric gastroenterologists are in such demand, it is crazy. the wait to get in as a first time patient is 2-3 months, even tho we have a pretty good supply here in chicago.
cleanliness is, indeed, one of the major suspects. especially the lack of parasites.
what has happened to our food supply and eating habits may be to blame for a similar increase in another disease that runs in my family- bi-polar disorder. it is also increasing rapidly and striking younger and younger. the shift in types of fat consumed is a big suspect.

[salib]

7. I think it is gas fumes, and the big SUV families are especially

vulnerable.

[zbdent]

4. k ^%sys

;)

[XemaSab]

8. When I think about

the lack of real effort towards eradicating completely preventable diseases, I get pretty cheesed.

How about instead of declaring a War on Drugs or a War on Terror, we declare a War on Polio? And spend the money we would otherwise spend on missiles to kill the poor brown folks who were unlucky enough to have been born Iraqi (or Arab, Asian, South American, Central American, or God forbid, African) on worldwide vaccinations?

We can win a war on polio, just like we won the war on smallpox, and when the war on polio is won, we can declare war on mumps, measles, whooping cough, and all these other diseases that are virtually unknown in the US.

It's totally unconscionable that we didn't do this a long time ago.

:rant:

[D-Notice]

9. How would a "War on Polio",

or a war on any major disease, be used as an excuse to prop up 3rd world dictators or invade other countries?

[XemaSab]

12. You're right

Congress would never go for it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. War on Polio was held back by Muslim fundamentalists

A momentous campaign appears likely to miss a target to drive polio from Earth by the end of 2005, health officials said, as the disease fought a stubborn last stand in Asia and Africa.
...
After an 18-year campaign worth three billion dollars started by US voluntary organisation Rotary International, which includes UN agencies, global governments and health authorities, polio hangs on only in remote areas which have escaped prior immunisation drives.

The Nigerian outbreak took hold after wild rumours circulated that doses of polio vaccine could cause AIDS, or were part of a US-led anti-Muslim plot.

Immunisation resumed last year after a diplomatic offensive which saw interventions by former US secretary of state Colin Powell and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/health/view/147375/1/.html

The historic effort to eradicate polio was jolted last week when the disease reappeared in Indonesia for the first time in a decade, but leaders of the global campaign said they are still confident they will succeed -- and might even make the long-shot target of halting transmission of the virus by year's end.

Since 2003, polio has reappeared in 16 countries that had been free of the paralytic disease for at least a few years, all of it traceable to a strain of the virus that began spreading in northern Nigeria when public fears about the vaccine temporarily stopped immunizations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/09/AR2005050901151.html

[XemaSab]

14. It's no more fair to blame Muslims for this

than it is to blame Black Africans.

Either way around, let's skip the racial generalizations.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. No, it was Muslim clerics

Despite this, an immunisation programme has been put on hold because of claims by Muslim clerics that the vaccine is being deliberately contaminated as part of a western plot.

Last August the northern Nigerian state of Kano suspended the campaign and set up a committee to investigate the claims.

In the predominantly Muslim region where anti-American sentiments often run high, the idea that the polio vaccine is part of a US plot to render women in the developing world infertile quickly took hold.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3400651.stm

Many residents in Kano, northern Nigeria's largest city still refuse to have their children vaccinated, not just against polio but against other childhood diseases such as measles. Mustafa Balarabe a 37-year-old father of four said his children wouldn't be vaccinated, citing "the general Western plot against Muslims worldwide" as the reason.

An imam in Kano, 50-year-old Ibrahim Abubakar, was unapologetic and said that the boycott of the polio vaccine in Kano was necessary to fulfil the religious injunction, which tells them to find out about a thing when they have doubts, he does not agree that Nigeria exported polio to any country. He says "if these countries were carrying out vaccinations they should not have had any cases."
...
Fifteen other countries where polio had been eradicated have been re-infected from Nigeria since 2003, when northern Islamic leaders led a vaccine boycott, claiming the immunization campaigns were part of a U.S. plot to infect Muslims with AIDS or render them infertile. American officials have repeatedly said there is nothing to the allegations.

Regional governors blocked U.N.-backed vaccination drives for several months, until they were satisfied in May 2004 by the purity of a vaccine, imported, ironically, from Indonesia. The preachers said supplies from a Muslim country could be trusted.

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=9808

There's nothing racial about this; I'm blaming these paranoid Muslim fundamentalists. They have killed people.

[triguy46]

10. The fundies are setting us up for a simlar fall

As a health care professional for over 30 years, I keep my ear to the ground on these things. Increasingly, the fundies are coming out with propaganda that vaccines are unsafe, do more harm than good, and are part of a conspiracy, and are most importantly unbiblical. Really.

http://poisonevercure.150m.com/from_a_christian_view_point.htm

As a nation we are once again a follower of other industrialized nations in this most basic measure of health, immunizations for childhood diseases. part of it is laziness, part of it is that todays parents havn't seen measles or mumps so have no experience and thus no fear of it, and lastly of course are the fundies.

[XemaSab]

13. The internet ain't biblical

either. Or phones, or TV, or cars.

Plumbing is downright pagan.