Robin Jackson

Measles outbreaks are devastating countries across the globe, linked to a massive drop in vaccination rates. The World Health Organisation has raised the alarm and ranked ‘vaccine hesitancy’ as one of the top 10 threats to public health everywhere. Washington state has experienced a measles outbreak in the past month. And South Africa is not immune to this.Dr Yogan Pillay, deputy director general at the Department of Health, said that 85 percent of children in South Africa are fully immunised by the age of one year – but the most recent data from the country’s Medical Research Council suggests this figure is closer to 70 percent. There are a number of factors that contribute to this with access to rural areas being one, where parents find it difficult to get to clinics and medical practitioners also finding it hard to reach many in the rural areas. Another factor is, of course, the anti-vaccination drives being fuelled by misinformation and bogus studies that have been debunked at proven to be false.But does