Mom shares measles story to educate on vaccines

As Covid-19 vaccines are being developed, this mom has an important message for anti-vaxxers.  In partnership with Global Citizen

Transcript

00:00We couldn't believe that she had caught something that's it's almost like an old-fashioned disease.

00:07Other children are going to get sick from measles because we're not vaccinating our children.

00:23They thought she had tonsillitis and then

00:26she seemed to deteriorate quite rapidly and start off with a rash

00:33and then we ended up back in A&E and that was when they

00:39said that yeah she would think that she has got measles.

00:43Alba wasn't old enough for a vaccination.

00:45So

00:47It was a discussion about how measles isn't really a thing anymore.

01:17It was almost completely eradicated.

01:20So when we knew that Alba was through the worst of it and she was on the road to recovery,

01:25we decided to post images of this, just to sort of say this is how important it is.

01:40I didn't expect that it would go viral, I didn't expect it to reach across the water.

01:47We've had messages from people all over the world.

01:51In a way it's been great because it's just getting the word out there that this is what

01:56can happen and how important the MMR vaccination is.

02:01A lot of people messaged to say I was on the fence about this and now I'm actually going

02:06to go and book my children in, which is the ideal outcome.

02:14And I only really doubted it when the anti-vaxxers got a hold of it, because they were personally

02:23attacking me as a mother and Alba as my child, they think that it's fake news.

02:30They thought that the images of Alba were fake, they thought that she was a doll, that

02:33I was being paid to do this, that my husband was from a pharmaceutical company, all sorts

02:41of made up rubbish about it.

02:44So there's a lot of controversy between the MMR and autism link.

02:48Dr Wakefield has been struck off from the medical register now because that link has

02:56been completely squashed.

03:45It's about protecting our children and the vulnerable children who cannot be vaccinated

03:49because they're sick or they have their immune compromised.

03:56I really just wanted to make a point about the mother's immunity.

04:02I had the vaccination, I had measles, I breastfed Alba and yet she still got sick.

04:07I'm not going to high five everyone who goes to have a vaccination but I think it's a sensible

04:11thing to do.