A mother whose child died aged six from a brain inflammation caused by measles hopes sharing her story will encourage parents to “vaccinate more”.

It comes as the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warned of measles outbreaks in parts of London.

Gemma Larkman-Jones wants more parents to consider having their children vaccinated sooner.

Prof Dame Jenny Harries, UKHSA chief executive, warned that measles is spreading among unvaccinated communities, and added that a “national call to action” is needed across the country.

Vaccination rates across the UK have been dropping, but there are particular concerns in parts of the capital as well as in some areas of the West Midlands.

  • @[email protected]
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    -710 months ago

    You’re being downvoted but I agree. None of this has anything to do with religion. A weird fiction that invokes “[the Christian] God provided the vaccine” is irrelevant and disrespectful to the humans that worked hard to create a vaccine.

    It’s a pretty bad idea in general to bring up a supposedly omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent “God” in the context of children dying of diseases anyway. What kind of God would allow children to die of cancer? Or any number of other currently incurable diseases?

    • @[email protected]
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      1010 months ago

      I think they’re saying they prayed to their “god” and from their perspective “their god” delivered through science.

      Not that god actually did anything

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        I actually meant it more like humans hold the power of a God in their hands. Something that could only have been seen as magical, as fairytale, as something humans do not have at their disposal. It only exists out there to beings that are not our own. That’s who people pray to because it is beyond man’s powers, children were beyond saving.

        I didn’t mean it as the work of God for I’m an atheist. I meant it like they prayed to a God and got ignored. But through science we created Godlike powers.

        I would say antibiotics and vaccines are literal God powers. Not from God but if you went back 100 years with that power people would think you a God.

    • @Rukmer
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      410 months ago

      Anti vaccine rhetoric has an extremely high correlation to religious people. The commentor was speculating about how these people in the past would have felt about the anti vaccine people today. It’s a valid question. People back then didn’t have access to information or access to much real hope; it’s not surprising they were religious.