By Sophie Cross

Recently the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph launched a campaign to give child care centres and pre schools the right to ban unvaccinated kids under a proposed "no jab, no play" policy.

The campaign has been launched to stop the rise in the number of children succumbing to preventable diseases, because parents are failing to have them fully immunised. The vaccination debate is also running high in the UK where a measles outbreak has affected almost 1000 people in the Swansea area of Wales, and is believed to have caused the death of a 25-year-old man.

In Australia, the death of a 10-year-old schoolboy from Chickenpox in 2009 shocked parents enough to take vaccination seriously. Even for Chickenpox, which we all remember from our childhood, which can kill. A vaccine has been available in Australia since 2005.

My own brother, as a child, developed thrombocytopenia (a disease that affects the production of platelets in the blood) following a nasty bout of Mumps. He was covered in bruises because his blood wouldn't clot. He was in constant danger of internal bleeding. He wasn't allowed to even get out of bed by himself in case he fell and caused uncontrollable bleeding. He was hospitalised for a long time and had to endure unbelievable pain through bone marrow tests in his spine.

Back then kids weren't vaccinated against Mumps as a matter of course, but I bet he wishes he had been. Mumps, measles, rubella and chickenpox don't just stop at those viruses. Serious viruses can lead to many other equally or much more life threatening illnesses.

Parents of children enrolling in school are asked to provide an Immunisation History Statement, which can be obtained by contacting the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register.

A child without an Immunisation History Statement will not be prevented from enrolling, but under the NSW Public Health Act 1991, children without proof of immunisation may be asked by Public Health Officials to stay at home during an outbreak of vaccine preventable disease.

So why is this not regulated in child care and pre school? And should children who haven't been immunised against the common infectious diseases simply be refused? We are all happy to accept schools as being nut free zones in order to prevent any harm to children with anaphylaxis, why is allowing potentially disease infected children into child care any different? At the end of the day not accepting children without Vaccines is designed to not only protect the children and teachers but also to protect those unvaccinated and therefore unprotected kids.

Sophie Cross is a public relations consultant and writer who has publicised and written about everything from makeup to The Muppets, child care to celebrity chefs and perfume to Partners in Population and Development! Originally from the UK and as a languages graduate she has worked around the world, living in Australia for the last 11 years where she runs, PR Chicks.

She lives and works remotely from her little piece of Spanish heaven in Chite, the Lecrin Valley, just south of Granada. And FYI it's pronounced "ch-ee-tay" not shite.

Read Sophie's blog

The Daily Telegraph said in its campaign opening that although only 1.5 per cent of parents are "vaccine refusers" or conscientious objectors, many parents are simply forgetful, leaving areas of NSW with vaccination rates below 85 per cent - despite the inarguable scientific proof that the vaccination program has saved thousands of lives and eradicated diseases that crippled children just a generation ago, including polio.

As parents we need to take responsibility here. You simply cannot "forget" to vaccinate your child any more than forget to feed it. Doctors and midwives, hospitals and health centres regularly give out fridge magnets and leaflets, even SMS and email reminders. It's pretty hard to genuinely "forget".

Yes it's a pain in the bum (or the arm!) but it's one of those things you simply have to do. Click here for the current vaccine schedule.

Of course there is a very small minority of objectors to vaccinating children, and this is largely due to misinformation, scaremongering and unsubstantiated stories of vaccines linked to other illnesses and syndromes such as autism.

Dr Rachael Dunlop, a medical researcher, science communicator and campaigner for science-based medicine in Australia believes that vaccination is not just a choice, but a civic duty:

"Vaccination is more than a personal choice, it's a social responsibility. Like not driving drunk or not smoking around people who don't want to breathe in your nicotine", she said recently in her article on Australian news and parenting website, MamaMia.com.au.

This is because immunisation is something that effects everyone in our community and especially the vulnerable – those who can't vaccinate, because they are too young or too sick.

Dunlop says that as a community "we must have zero tolerance for misinformation about vaccinations". Dr Dunlop has previously written an article about vaccination myths for Mamamia. Below she writes about what to do when you're faced with anti-vax rhetoric or anyone who tries to deny science. Present these facts in a calm fashion:

1. "Vaccines cause autism."
No. No. No. Do I need to say this again? No. One of the most powerful pieces of evidence to show that there is no link between vaccines and autism comes from Japan where they replaced the triple vaccine Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) with single vaccines mid-1993. Guess what happened? Autism continued to rise.

This should have been the final nail in the coffin for the autism/vaccines link but instead opponents just shifted the blame to thiomersal, the mercury-containing component that was present in small amounts in some vaccines where it was used as a preservative (MMR never contained thiomersal).

This component was removed from all scheduled childhood vaccines in the year 2000, solely because of the scary word "mercury" and not for any fears or evidence for harmful effects. If it were contributing to rising cases of autism then you would expect a dramatic drop following its removal. Instead, like the MMR in Japan, the opposite is true, and autism continues to rise.

Of course these are not the only pieces of evidence, and scientists continue to test, and re-test the safety of vaccines. A recently published exhaustive review examining 12,000 research articles covering 8 different vaccines concluded there was no link between vaccines and autism. While scientists still don't know the exact causes of autism, we are looking like mad and one thing we can be extremely confident of is that it's not vaccines.

2. "Vaccines cause and spread the disease they're supposed to prevent."
This is a common misunderstanding particularly for the flu vaccine as many of us experience side effects following a vaccine that can easily be confused with influenza. For example, you can expect to get a sore arm at the site of injection, perhaps a slight fever, maybe a headache – symptoms synonymous with flu.

But you absolutely definitely cannot get the flu from the vaccine because there is no "live" virus in it to infect you. The mild response you get following a flu vaccine, or any vaccine for that matter, is in fact a good sign since it indicates your immune system is responding, thus the vaccine is working.

In the pages of history there are cases of vaccines causing the disease they were meant to prevent – for example in the USA in 1955, a bad batch of polio vaccine exposed several thousand children to live polio virus upon vaccination – but advances in technology and testing ensure the likelihood of this happening again is virtually zero.

3. "I had the chicken pox and I'm fine."
Many of us old enough to have been grown up before vaccines for chicken pox was widely available probably remember getting childhood diseases. But does this mean we should risk it for our own kids, especially when there's an option to prevent it? Well let's look at the risks from the disease versus the vaccination and you can decide.

In every case, the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks, and even more significantly outweigh the harm potentially caused by the disease. In the case of measles, the risk of encephalitis, which can lead to brain damage is 1 in 1,000. The risk of contracting encephalitis from the measles vaccine it's 1 in 1,000,000 (note, all vaccines have side effects without which they would have no effect). Without any vaccine, 6 out of 100 children infected with measles will get pneumonia and 2 kids out of every 1,000 infected will die.

Pertussis or whooping cough is most severe in kids under the age of 1, commonly requires hospitalisation and kills 1 in 200 unvaccinated children. Severe complications occur almost exclusively in the unvaccinated and include pneumonia, seizures, cracked ribs from severe coughing, brain damage from lack of oxygen, vomiting after coughing fits, and long-term lung damage. There is no cure for whooping cough. Antibiotics are administered to prevent infection of others, but the only truly effective preventative measure is vaccination.

4. "There are two sides."
There are two sides to the vaccine "debate" just like there are two sides to the "earth is round" debate (yes, the Flat Earth Society really does exist). On the one hand there is the scientific consensus backed by extensive research that vaccines are safe and effective, and on the other there is obfuscation, half-truths, misinformation and debunked research.

The only debate is one that has been manufactured by those with a vested interest in undermining confidence in vaccines. Those like Andrew Wakefield, who has been accused of deliberate fraud by the British Medical Journal for suggesting there was a link between the MMR and autism all the while pocketing money from lawyers tasked with suing the vaccine manufacturers.

Wakefield was also poised to submit a patent on a single measles vaccine, from which he stood to profit substantially once he'd scared everyone away from the triple antigen MMR. He also stood to make millions from a diagnostic kit he had developed for autistic enterocolitis, a new condition he claimed to have identified in his 1998 Lancet paper (which has since been retracted by the publisher). So yes, I guess there are two sides, there is the side where all the evidence lies in support of vaccination, then there are the cranks and quacks with a vested interest.

A polio patient. Yep.

5. "Major illnesses like polio have disappeared so we don't need vaccines."
Major illnesses like polio have disappeared precisely because of vaccines. Anyone heard of someone contracting smallpox recently? No? Well that's because the last remaining supplies of smallpox now reside locked in a deep freezer in the depths of the Centres for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA. Smallpox was wiped out because of a concerted vaccination programme.

Indeed measles was also heading the same way – Australia was declared measles free in 2005 by the WHO – before we became complacent, stopped being so diligent about vaccinating and it got a chance to take hold again. The impact of not vaccinating for measles can be seen in the current epidemic in Wales where there are now over 500 cases, many of the age who missed out on their MMR vaccination following the famous 1998 Andrew Wakefield scare.

In Australia in 2010, doctors were shocked by the death of a 22 year old who died from diphtheria, a disease now unheard of, after contracting it from a friend who caught it during an overseas holiday. It is believed she wasn't vaccinated against the bacterial infection.

In many ways, vaccines are a victim of their own success, since they create an "out-of-mind, out-of-sight" scenario lulling us into a false sense of security. We don't see kids in calipers anymore, or hospitals full of iron lungs, but if we stop vaccinating then we create an environment where they can return.

6. "Vaccines can overwhelm the undeveloped immune system in kids' tiny bodies."
The concept of "too many too soon" has been championed by celebrity Mom Jenny McCarthy and Dr Bob Spears, and as a result has been the subject of intense scrutiny by scientists. Very recently a detailed analysis of the US childhood immunisation schedule was conducted to look for any deleterious effects of the number of vaccines kids receive.

The Institute of Medicine specifically looked for evidence that vaccination is linked to "autoimmune diseases, asthma, hypersensitivity, seizures, child developmental disorders, learning or developmental disorders, or attention deficit or disruptive disorders", including autism. They confirmed what other researchers have also observed, that the childhood schedule is safe.

With respect to overwhelming kids' immune systems, the tiny amount of antigens in vaccines pales in to comparison to what they are exposed to every day via playing, eating and drinking. The amount of immune challenges that children fight every day (2,000 – 6,000) in the environment is significantly greater than the number of antigens or reactive particles in all their vaccinations combined (about 150 for the entire vaccination schedule).

Also, because of innovations in the way vaccines are made, today's vaccines contain far fewer antigens than those administered in the past. The new pertussis vaccine for example has significantly less antigens than the older style "whole cell" vaccine meaning it causes fewer side effects (but that it is also less effective).

So please parents, don't forget to get your children vaccinated on time and in time. If you don't vaccinate, you are not just putting your children at risk; you are putting the whole community at risk. Ask Swansea.

You can read the full article by Rachel Dunlop, or the Daily Telegraph story or head to our article on Child care and Vaccination.