Editorial: Time to stop keeping kids immune from jab

ENOUGH is enough. The Sunday and Daily Telegraphs have launch a pro-immunisation campaign to protect vulnerable children.

No Jab No Play

ENOUGH is enough. The Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph have launched a pro-immunisation campaign to protect vulnerable children.

Since Sunday, we have been accused of denying human rights, of ostracizing unvaccinated children and unfairly judging parents who make a health choice for their children.

But the overwhelming response to the #NoJabNoPlay campaign has been positive.

More than 2000 people have signed our petition. A number that is continuing to grow virtually by the minute.

Most parents are rightfully fed up with those who put other people's children at risk.

More than a thousand people have signed our petition calling for restrictions in childcare for unvaccinated children and we have been inundated with letters, TXTs, tweets, Facebook posts and emails supporting the campaign.

We need to keep up the pressure on both tiers of government to force change.

The vocal minority have been driving debate on this issue and scaring parents into doubting the benefits of immunisation and exaggerating the risks.

That has to stop.

The petition is one easy way to let the silent majority to tell governments how they feel

What we said on Sunday
It is one thing for anti-immunisation parents to make a decision about the health of their own children, but it is an entirely different matter when those decisions risk the lives of an entire generation.

The hysteria whipped up by ill-informed antivaccination supporters has to end. It is a dangerous position driven by smug parents armed with outdated and wrong propaganda.

Be heard: Sign our vaccination petition here

They think they know more than the medical community. The truth of the matter is they are not clever, they’re just lucky — lucky that their families have never been touched with the unimaginable anguish of a child’s death from a disease medical science has already beaten.

Those same parents will break all speed limits in their Audi SUVs to get their child to hospital should they catch a preventable disease, while looking for someone else to blame.

Our provaccination campaign is not a new idea. It is a constant source of anger and frustration that we need to reignite the debate in 2013.

Related story: Vaccination refusals high as babies die

In the past the campaigns have concentrated on making vaccination compulsory, but unfortunately successive governments have not had the stomach for it. Our ‘‘ No Jab, No Play’’ campaign is focusing its effort on specific initiatives to encourage more parents to vaccinate.

We are calling on the state government to allow childcare centres to ban children who have not been vaccinated. And we are calling on the federal government to withhold the childcare rebate from every parent who fails to immunise.

The absurd situation exists now that childcare rebates are withheld for nonimmunisers unless you register as a ‘‘ conscientious objector’’. In short, it’s OK to put other children’s lives at risk as long as you admit it.

Vaccines are the most effective public health measures ever introduced. Since childhood vaccine was introduced (diphtheria, in 1932) infant mortality has plummeted.

But for vaccines to work effectively, everyone has to immunise.

In some parts of NSW, vaccination rates are lower than 75 per cent and diseases we thought we’d defeated are blossoming again. Sometimes parents don’t get their kids vaccinated because they can’t be bothered.

For those parents, there is no better incentive than being turned away from childcare or school, or being hit in the hip pocket. Far more sinister, however, is the Australian Vaccination Network — a misleading name for a hysterical anti-immunisation organisation.

These people argue the whooping cough vaccine causes brain damage, the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine causes autism, and vaccination in general causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

These claims have been discredited by the weight of science — but still parents wantonly ignore the facts.

In coming days, we will give you the science, and the true statistics. And we will introduce you to parents who have lost their children.

Be heard: Sign our vaccination petition here

You’ll hear from the anti-vaccination movement, but you won’t hear much. We believe they have had their say.

The AVN's deceptively reasonable sounding mantra is "Because every issue has two sides". But when it comes to children falling victim to often lethal diseases that could have been prevented with a simple jab, there aren’t two sides. There’s only one.