Visible public health leadership needed to improve immunization coverage – ScienceDaily



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Professor John Ashton, a public health expert, calls on local public health directors to show leadership in addressing the recent systematic deterioration in immunization coverage levels. Write in the Journal of the Royal Society of MedicineIt describes recent falls in participation in other prevention programs, including bowel, bad and cervical cancer and the aortic aneurysm. This, he writes, points to the fragmentation and weakening of public health devices, and especially links with the NHS, since the reorganization of 2013 when public health directors were transferred to local government.

Taking advantage of more than 900 cases of measles during the last 12 months in Great Britain, Prof. Ashton writes that current weaknesses in the public health care delivery system must be resolved before resorting to legislation. State Secretary for Health, Matt Hanbad, recently suggested the possibility of imposing fines on parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, as well as the ban on anti-vaccination publications on social media.

"Part of the problem is to make apparent the invisibility of prevention visible, it requires imagination and creativity, as well as leadership and effective service delivery." According to Professor Ashton, the alternative is to wait for a public health catastrophe to shake off the inertia and forces of darkness.

"The recovery from measles, mumps and rubella vaccination in northwestern England, which relies on one of the strongest public health systems and leadership visible in public health, clearly shows the level of immunity of the herd, after the initial plunge after the publication of the claims of the former discredited doctor, Andrew Wakefield. "

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