Rubella vaccination is safe and recommended

I refer to the letter Rubella Vaccination published in The Times of Monday, April 28. The clinical infection with rubella in adults is usually a mild illness and complications occur rarely. However, if rubella occurs in a pregnant woman, it may cause congenital rubella syndrome, with potentially devastating consequences for the developing foetus.

Children who are infected with rubella before birth are at risk of growth retardation, mental retardation, malformations of the heart and eyes, deafness, and liver, spleen, and bone marrow problems.

Vaccination has been proven to be an effective measure in reducing the number of many vaccine preventable diseases and has also been effective in the global eradication of smallpox. Rubella can be prevented by the rubella vaccine. Widespread immunisation against rubella is critical to controlling the spread of the disease, thereby preventing birth defects caused by congenital rubella syndrome. If boys were not vaccinated, only half the population would be covered and this would not be enough to prevent the virus from circulating in the community, hence boys would be able to give rubella to susceptible pregnant women.

The rubella vaccination is given in combination with the measles and mumps (MMR) vaccine at the age of 15 months with a second dose at age 8-9 years. Hence it also offers protection against measles and mumps apart from rubella. Measles is often an unpleasant mild or moderately severe illness. Complications are more common in children under the age of five or adults over the age of 20.

The most serious complications include blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhoea (possibly leading to dehydration), ear infections and severe respiratory infections such as pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death associated with measles.

Mumps can affect many different body systems and cause flu-like symptoms, abdominal pain, swollen cheeks, and swollen and painful testicles. Complications can occur and include infection of the brain or meningitis, inflammation of the testicles or ovaries (can cause sterility in both males and females), hearing loss, inflammation of the pancreas and miscarriage.

The MMR vaccine has been studied extensively and it has an excellent safety record with absolutely no suggestion of any association with autism.

It is important to stress that, when a normal healthy child or adult contracts one of these viral infections, there is no way of predicting how severe the infection will become or which complications will develop. The Health Division strongly recommends that parents follow the recommended vaccine schedule for their children and that adults take note to update their immunization status in order to help the battle against vaccine preventable diseases.