World Immunisation Week — House of Commons, 2019-05-02
Topic: Health
Thangam Elizabeth Rachel Debbonaire (Labour, Centre-left): It is truly a pleasure to follow not only my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), but the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and all of the Front Bench speakers, and I am sure that the summing up speeches will also be a pleasure to hear. It is truly a pleasure—a constructive pleasure—to be able to say during a debate in this place that there have been excellent contributions from everyone in the House. We have already come to various points of consensus and agreement. We can all point to things that need to be done, as well as to places that we can learn from and successes that we can celebrate. I will try to confine my remarks to areas that have not been covered by others—I always try really hard not to repeat things that other people have already said. I will focus mostly on antimicrobial resistance and the relationship with immunisation In the 1970s, when I was nine, I went to India for the very first time. Just like the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, who described his experience with his dad, I can still remember the pain and discomfort of the vaccinations. I can also remember much more clearly the impact of seeing someone with elephantiasis when I reached India, and of meeting a relative who had been affected by one of the deadly diseases, which she had survived but which had left her permanently disabled, that I had been vaccinated against. It was a really visceral experience of the connection between the discomfort and pain of the vaccination and the consequences of not having access to that vaccination. It was also a real-life experience of inequality—the fact that I had received that vaccination because I was a UK citizen, and the people whom I met in India at that time were not getting those vaccinations. The experience transformed me and my understanding of what vaccinations did. Obviously I was a child so I was transformed from being a child without information to being a child with a really strong sense of the importance of vaccination. As an adult, I have been left with a real passion about the value of vaccinations, particularly in the way that they eradicate inequality as well as disease I am glad that this debate falls under the Department for International Development rather than the Department for Health and Social Care; it is an interesting place from which to be discussing this matter. Others have already provided examples of diseases, such as smallpox, and also polio, with its permanent debilitating effects. Polio is a good example of a disease that has been virtually eliminated in most countries through widespread vaccination, but still circulates partly because the symptoms are not easily recognised in certain parts of the world. The value of vaccination is so crucial in those diseases where early signs are not necessarily clear or where infection can be transmitted before there are early signs, such as in the case of measles, as the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) mentioned While I cut out from my speech things that others have already said, I will also add something about the decision not to vaccinate a child. The hon. Lady was absolutely right: we must not patronise parents. If they have valid questions, they must be heard, and if they have worries, they must be understood. The right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire mentioned certain specific examples of why we have to listen to people. Obviously, we can be gung ho in our attitude, but not in our interactions. I apologise for being personal about this, but it occurred to me that if someone said to me right now that there was someone in the Lobby who could vaccinate me against ever having cancer again, I would not be seen for dust. We would all rush. We would have no question. We probably would not even stop to ask what the side effects would be. We would be out there immediately. It occurs to me that in our lived memory, we have lost the understanding of the fact that measles is also a deadly disease. Hearing the right hon. Gentleman read out that account from Roald Dahl was really moving and served, perhaps, as a reminder of the issues, or even as new information to many parents who are fortunate enough to live in a world where measles is no longer in front of us—in this country certainly—causing those deaths.