EU to combat vaccine-scepticism after record measles outbreaks

A dangerous re-emergence of measles in Europe has shocked EU health minsters into tackling the public’s lack of trust in childhood immunisation with the launch of campaigns against vaccine-scepticism.Instead of celebrating the eradication of measles in 2010 as the EU had planned, the reverse has happened and Europe is now witness to a series of epidemics in the disease, largely a result of often middle-class parents’ growing fear of the real or imagined side-effects of vaccinisation. In April, the World Health Organisation warned that measles cases in Europe have exploded as a result of insufficient numbers of children having received vaccination, with 6,500 reported in 33 EU and non-EU countries from January to March. EU states are now home to the highest burden of measles in the developed world and the bloc is the largest exporter of measles to the United States. Between January and April, 275 cases were reported in Britain, against...