Sat 21 November 2009
About immunisation > Risk
Assessing the risks of immunisation
Everything we do in life has a degree of risk associated with it. So to consider the risk of immunisation it's useful to think about risk in other areas of our lives.
In this way we can compare the likelihood of something going wrong when a child is immunised, with the likelihood of suffering other misfortunes in life. This may help to put the risk in perspective.
To do this you need to take into account:
- the likelihood of something going wrong with a particular activity, and
- how often you engage in the activity.
For example, every time you get into a car, you are taking a risk of being involved in an accident. In 2001, almost 5,000 children were killed or seriously injured on the roads in Great Britain.
The risk of a child pedestrian being involved in a road accident rises significantly at the age when they start school and children between 11 and 15 are most at risk of being killed or seriously
injured as pedestrians or cyclists. (Source: Dept for Transport)
With the MMR vaccine there is a risk of 1 in a 1000 of febrile convulsions (fits).
But if you catch the measles disease, the risk of convulsions is 1 in 200 people with the disease.
So when you look at the relative risks of immunisation, it is important to remember that an unimmunised child is at greater risk of catching measles, one of the most infectious diseases there is and one which can cause serious complications or even death.
It's difficult to calculate the exact risk of a child catching measles because it will vary according to the level of immunity in the child's community and how much they travel outside of that community.