Health boss tells of 'battle' with anti-vax groups

Dr Lisa McNally told the committee that social media groups promote "scare stories" over vaccinations

Worcestershire's director of public health has said she will continue to "battle" social media anti-vax groups.

Addressing a county council health scrutiny committee, Dr Lisa McNally spoke of the importance of being protected against diseases like measles and said her main opponent during the Covid-19 pandemic had been social media groups "promoting scare stories".

Her comments come after a child died at Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital earlier this month after contracting measles.

Dr McNally said: "I'm up for that battle, as I made clear during the pandemic. I'll take them on because we have to. We owe it to, for example, the parents of that child in Liverpool."

Following the child's death, the hospital warned parents that a fall in uptake of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine had been behind a spike in cases in the region.

The council health committee heard Worcestershire has a high uptake of vaccines including MMR and flu jabs, and that while trust in vaccination remains high among parents, there had been a "slow and steady" decline in pre-school vaccination uptake rates over the past 10 years.

Dr McNally warned that children in the county were at "real risk" if they had not received the MMR vaccination.

She said: "It is difficult. [Online groups] have advantages over us – they're anonymous often, they can use threats where we keep things at a professional level.

"But we don't give up on it and we keep going because every child that is vaccinated, every person that has their flu jab this winter, is a person less at risk of really serious illness.

"That's enough motivation for me and all my colleagues to keep battling that."

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.