WE still have uninformed quacks such as the Australian Vaccination Network masquerading as a reputable body, writes Susie O'Brien.
WHEN a child got chicken pox when I was young in the 1970s, the mothers of other kids whooped with joy.
They would send their own kids around to play with the sick child in the hope they would catch it, and, thereafter, be immune from the disease.
Parents thought it was much better to get chicken pox or measles at five or seven rather than as an adult, when there can be serious health implications.
But there were risks to this approach, and children still became very ill. In any case, the parents' theories weren't always right, and some children caught dangerous diseases such as chicken pox over and over.
Since then, we've seen an amazing expansion of rigorously research vaccines giving Aussie kids - and children around the developed world - protection.
Our kids no longer have to worry about diseases such as rubella (German measles), measles, influenza, diphtheria and polio.
So why, then, are parents again taking matters into their own hands? Why on earth are more parents now choosing not to vaccinate their young ones?
I experienced this first-hand a few weeks ago when my four-year-old son, who is fully immunised, got chicken pox. He had a fever for a few days, then some mild spots appeared.
He was banished from childcare and kindy so he wouldn't infect others. Fair enough.
Staff then trawled through immunisation records and sent home all children who hadn't been immunised for their own safety.
What many parents don't realise is that immunisation is no guarantee they won't get some of these diseases; it's just less likely and the cases are much milder.
The far greater risk is non-immunised kids, who are much more likely to get sick - often with alarming side-effects.
So I'd like to know why we allow non-immunised kids into kindies, childcare centres and schools when they are clearly at such risk. And why should they be allowed to put our kids in danger? It's ludicrous.
If you enrol your kids, you should have to immunise them.
Every child should have to complete the full course of jabs unless there is an adverse reaction.
The science on vaccination is a bit like climate change: rarely has there ever been such a consensus among scientists that global warming is real.
And yet we still have uninformed quacks such as the Australian Vaccination Network masquerading as a reputable body supposedly providing parents with unbiased information.
Sadly, their alarmist claptrap is working: in some places in Australia, vaccination rates are dropping for the first time in decades, and now the parents of about 80,000 kids think they know better than hundreds of scientists around the world.
As such, we're seeing serious outbreaks of diseases such as measles and whooping cough for the first time in years.
The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in NSW are running a campaign to lobby kindies and preschools to ban kids who are not immunised. I'd love to see this rolled out across the nation.
Parents wondering whether to jab or not to jab should be reassured.
Flares and hot pants went out of fashion in the late 1970s, and so, too, should have the anti-vaccination movement.
There is no excuse for parents not to immunise their kids.