Letter

Don’t patronise parents

Dear healthmatters- Hurrah for the article Getting the needle (issue 16). At last it has been recognised that there is such a thing as rational non-compliance with childhood immunisation. However, I felt I had to write about the Jekyll and Hyde approach of the Health Education Authority. On the one hand they publish the report referred to in the article, yet on the other they publish a poster showing a brain damaged baby with the words ‘And you thought measles only caused little marks on the skin’.

This poster is clearly designed to frighten parents into having their children immunised. I find it patronising and emotive, and sadly lacking in information.

Health education is about providing information to enable people to make rational and informed choices about their own and their family’s health. I am surprised to see the HEA resorting to scare tactics in this ‘mother knows best’ approach. This may have the desired effect in some cases - frightening parents into taking their children to be immunised - but it is just as likely to cause a reaction against all health education, with all that that entails.

Did anybody at the HEA consider the effect this poster could have on a parent whose child actually has measles and who could be terrified that ‘pneumonia, blindness, deafness and even brain damage’ were natural consequences and not serious but rare complications of the disease?

I hope your readers will look out for these and similar posters and consign them to where they belong - the waste paper bin.

And can I add my own personal plea as a parent? Give us information - not scare tactics!