Editorial: The success of vaccines is always prey to sentiment

​​A worrying report has been released on declining vaccine rates among children in Northern Ireland.

Some 15,000 such children have not been fully vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) in the last seven years.

And in 13 out of 14 infectious diseases among pre-school children, jab rates have been steadily declining.

The report from Comptroller and Auditor General Dorinnia Carville said there was no single reason for declining rates of vaccination, but said likely factors included delivery capacity within GP practices.

This is not a trend limited to Northern Ireland, but a wider one.

No conversation about declining vaccine rates should happen without reference to the almost superstitious aversion to jabs in some quarters.

Consider how swathes of the population listened to the fraudster Andrew Wakefield, and his thoroughly discredited claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism have been extensively investigated and found to be false.

His research was discredited more than a decade ago yet is still cited by anti vaxxers and conspiracy theorists.

It led to many parents being needlessly wary of the MMR jab, a decline in its uptake and so put millions of children at risk of measles.

There were also damaging conspiracy theories about the Covid vaccines, which were the big breakthrough in the battle against coronavirus.