Public Health Briefing: Measles awareness and information in different languages (posted 28th July 2023)

The data shows that between 1 January and 30 June this year there have been 128 cases of measles, compared to 54 cases in the whole of 2022, with 66 per cent of the cases detected in London.

Measles is highly contagious and can lead to complications which require hospital treatment.

The important messages are:

• Vaccines are our best line of defence against diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).
• For lifelong protection, you need two doses of the MMR vaccine. However, the number of children vaccinated against these diseases has fallen over the past few years.
• Parents and carers need to make sure their children are up to date with their two MMR doses.
• If you’re not sure if your child is up to date with their vaccines, please check their Red Book or speak to your GP Practice.
• It’s never too late to catch up, and you can get the MMR vaccine for free on the NHS whatever your age.

For more information, visit the NHS website.

Our ask to you: We are calling on all partners who work with residents, especially families, to continue to include the messaging above, the image and the link, in your staff and external newsletters and emails.

We are also including the resources below to support you sharing messages around vaccinations:

Leaflet on measles (in range of languages)

English versions of this leaflet to order on the GOV UK webpage.

Download versions in Arabic, Afrikaans, Bengali, Chinese, Cantonese, French, Hindi, Hebrew, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romani, Romanian, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu, Ukrainian and Yiddish.

Video from Dr Colin Campbell on how we measure the measles risk.