Ireland
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[2008] Ireland - 10,000 children wait for TB vaccine

"It has been reported by the UK DoH that there has been an epidemic of measles in the Dublin area, and that two children have died:  one child suffering from malnutrition, other had other complications, so probably spurious to automatically link deaths to lack of vaccination. Details of cause of death not known. Also 6 intensive care cases, same lack of information - but see below.  According to the PHLS of Ireland, the Informed Immunisation Network Dublin and Eurosurveillance Weekly, the year-2000 outbreak grew thus: by Feb 2000 there were 16 hospitalisations, but 9 were under age of vaccination and 4 vaccinated. Only 3 out of 16 cases were therefore children who had avoided vaccination.  By June 2000, there were 844 cases, of which 101 were hospitalised. The highest attack rate was in ages 6-14 months, i.e. under the age of MMR. By end September 2000 there were 1523 cases.  What the UK DoH does not quote about Ireland is numbers of deaths following vaccination. Any recorded numbers also likely to be underestimate because paediatricians do not always link with MMR."--David Thrower

Some years ago much was made of two deaths from measles in Dublin. I tracked down the cases and found both children were already seriously ill before they contracted measles. But I was able to find this out only because of the openness of the Irish authorities. When a measles death was reported in Britain a few months ago, I was refused further information on the phoney grounds of 'confidentiality'. I was not planning to reveal the child's identity - only his general medical state - and the officials involved knew this.  Creepier still was the carefully organised and mysterious attempt to scare me in to silence by sending me phoney letters from non-existent mothers claiming their children had nearly died because of my columns. Supposedly, the invented mothers had not given their children the MMR because they had read my articles, and the fictional children had then been seriously ill. [Media June 2006] If MMR is safe, why the lies and paranoia? --Hitchins