Is the MMR vaccine safe after all? STEPHEN LEWIS weighs up the evidence

If health bosses were hoping publication of the results of the largest-ever study into the effects of the controversial MMR vaccine would end any worries people might have that it could be linked to autism, they may have another thing coming. The 14-year Finnish study, which involved 1.8 million children and saw every hospital and health centre in Finland reporting their findings, concludes the combined vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella does not contribute to autism or bowel problems in children.

It may, the report concedes, occasionally cause other side effects. Out of every 100,000 children who took part in the study, 5.3 per cent (or about one in 20,000) showed serious adverse effects ranging from epilepsy, seizures and meningitis to allergic reactions. One child died.

But those adverse effects were rare, the report says - and even among the one in 20,000 problem cases reported, about half were probably caused or contributed to by other factors.

The study concluded: "Serious events causally related to the MMR vaccine are rare and greatly outweighed by the risks of natural MMR diseases."

Naturally enough, the Government - which is keen to boost the take-up of MMR amid dire warnings that if vaccination levels fall much more, there could be a threat of a measles outbreak - has seized on the results.

The study, it said, was a vote of confidence in the MMR jab - and parents who had not had their children vaccinated should take them to their GPs.

Many parents, though, will remain unconvinced.

Marilyn Smith, a member of the anti-vaccination group Jabs, said: "When you've got a child it's the most precious thing in the world and no amount of figures can change the concerns we have about MMR.

"I have people phoning me up with their concerns. They say their child was fine one day and then it had the MMR jab and the next day it was as if they didn't know them any more.

"That is the evidence I see and I don't think any report which is shoved down our throats will change the concerns people have."

Haxby mum Katy Hyde agrees. She drove her 18-month old son Ben all the way to Surrey last summer so he could have a single measles vaccine rather than MMR because the single jab was not available locally. A colleague recently took her own child to a doctor in Sheffield to have the single mumps vaccine, Katy says. "She was waiting in a room of ten other parents," she said. "Hers was the only 'normal' child. All the others had autism. Every single parent there said to her 'I wish I had done what you're doing.'"

Katy herself will be taking Ben to Sheffield for his mumps vaccine in a couple of weeks - and says she doesn't regret the £200 spent on getting him vaccinated privately, or the travelling.

It's that attitude that has got health officials worried. In North Yorkshire, the take-up rate for the MMR vaccine is 88 per cent for the first dose and 78 per cent for the second dose by a child's fifth birthday - below the 90-95 per cent the World Health Organisation says is needed to guarantee what is known as 'herd immunity.'

"We would like to see those figures improved," admits North Yorkshire public health consultant Dr Phil Kirby. "If you have 95 per cent coverage, then if you have a case, most children are immunised and it measles does not spread. Once you get below 90 per cent, then if you get a case, there is potential for further children to be infected and that's when you get an outbreak."

Katy says that while the rate of MMR take-up may be falling, many parents are having their children vaccinated privately with single jabs - so many children classified as not protected may in fact have been immunised.

And with many health professionals themselves yet to be convinced that MMR is risk-free - at least according to a study in the British Medical Journal - it may be some time yet before worries about MMR are laid to rest.