Authorities in Britain will today launch a campaign to boost child vaccination rates as they seek to “immediately reverse” a declining trend in vaccinations amid a worsening measles outbreak in the country.

The vaccination rate of children in Britain for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, as well as polio and diphtheria, has been falling gradually over the past decade, but has fallen even more since the covid pandemic.

Last year Unicef ​​pointed out that people around the world had lost confidence in vaccines during the pandemic, with misinformation and declining trust in governments and political polarization contributing to increasing misgivings.

From next week, Britons will start seeing advertisements in various media, including television, featuring children reminding parents of the dangers of skipping vaccinations, the UK Health Safety Agency (UKHSA) said.

“We need an immediate reversal of the decline in childhood vaccination rates to protect our communities,” said UKHSA chief executive Jenny Harris.

“There are still large percentages of children in some areas who remain unprotected from preventable diseases (…) If vaccination rates do not improve, we will start to see the diseases that these vaccines protect against reemerge and cause more severe disease “, he added.

The campaign comes as Britain sees a surge in measles cases, with 650 reported in the country since October 1, the UKHSA said. More than 180 new cases of the disease have been recorded in the last four weeks.

UKHSA figures show that the proportion of 2-year-olds in England who have had the MMR vaccine, for measles, mumps and rubella, reached its lowest point in 2021 since the covid outbreak. It has increased slightly since then, but remains below the 95% target set by the World Health Organization for herd immunity.