www.jewishnews.co.uk
5 September 2019 Jewish News
5
Measles concerns / Netanyahu visit / News
Hackney vaccinations now Bibi due in London SEVEN times below average Orthodox Jewish parents in north London are again being urged to give their children two doses of the MMR vaccine, after figures showed protection levels in Orthodox areas falling seven times faster than the national average. Sharp drops in vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella in fiveyear-olds were recorded in Hackney and Haringey, the two areas with the largest Orthodox populations in the capital. Last year, public health workers identified Orthodox communities in both boroughs as recording outbreaks of measles among Charedi children following contact with unvaccinated Charedi groups in Israel. In the first quarter of 2018, Hackney recorded 91.5 percent of five-yearolds having had at least one course of the MMR vaccination, but by the first quarter of this year, that figure had fallen substantially to 88.5 percent. Likewise in Haringey, the first-dose MMR five-year vaccination figure for the first quarter of 2018 was 90.8 percent, whereas by the first quarter of this year it fell to 87.7 percent. Across the UK as a whole, first-dose MMR five-year vaccination rates fell by 0.4 percent, meaning that in Hackney and Haringey immunity against the potentially
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to fly into London to meet his embattled British counterpart on Thursday to discuss the response to the Iranian threat in the Middle East. Netanyahu is meeting Boris Johnson just weeks after he took the keys to 10 Downing Street, and in the middle of a fierce parliamentary fight over Brexit. Israeli media also reported that the new United States Secretary of Defence Mark Esper would join the pair, as the three countries aim to iron out a concerted response to increasing military confrontation with Iran and its regional proxies. The pair last met in London in February 2017.
MAYOR AT WARSAW GHETTO Vaccination numbers in Hackney fell sharply in the first quarter of this year
lethal diseases has fallen more than seven times faster than the national average. More worryingly, clinicians say children need two doses to be fully protected, yet while 87.2 percent of five-year olds in England have had this, only 74 percent of children in Haringey, and only 67 percent in Hackney, are completed immunised. Several studies have shown the MMR vaccine is safe, but rumours continue to circulate that it is linked to autism, which was the finding of a long-debunked 1998 study by disgraced doctor Andrew Wakefield. A population needs to have immunisa-
tion levels of at least 95 percent to be protected, sometimes known as “herd immunity” and some experts are suggesting governments make vaccinations mandatory. Last year, Public Health England liaised with GPs, laid on extra immunisation clinics and wrote to Orthodox schools, nurseries and children’s centres to raise awareness that measles was circulating, distributing leaflets in English and Yiddish. Community leaders also urged families to give children the two-part vaccine. Measles kill one in every thousand children who catch it.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan paid respects at The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in Warsaw, commemorating Jews who rose up against the Nazis. He took to Twitter to say: “We must never forget them, nor the evil they fought against.”
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03/09/2019 17:14