Childhood vaccination rates falling across Ireland, GP warns

‘Extremely dangerous trend’

GP Dr Máire Finn said the decline was particularly concerning because illnesses that were once close to being eradicated are appearing again. 

Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with David McCullagh, she warned that lower vaccination rates could leave more children vulnerable to serious infections.

“It's an extremely dangerous trend because we have the tendency now that diseases that were almost eradicated are now showing themselves again,” she said.

Parents warned as online misinformation shapes vaccine fears

Vaccination rates began falling in many countries between 2019 and 2022, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Health experts have raised concerns about growing vaccine hesitancy and the influence of misleading claims shared online.

Dr Finn said the success of vaccination programmes may have contributed to the problem. 

With diseases such as measles, polio, rubella and whooping cough becoming less common, some parents have little experience of how serious they can be.

“They were not afraid that measles would kill them or leave them blind or deaf or brain damaged,” she said, referring to earlier generations who were more familiar with the consequences of these illnesses.

She believes the concerns now being raised about vaccines are increasingly shaped by information circulating online, rather than by direct experience of the diseases themselves.

“The fear of the disease isn't there so much as the fear of what's being propagated online, by poor actors,” she said.

GP calls vaccination a 'moral and societal responsibility'

Several countries have since experienced significant outbreaks.

Dr Finn noted that opposition to vaccines is not a new phenomenon, with hesitancy dating back to the first vaccines in the 1700s.

However, she said decisions about immunisation affect more than individual families, making vaccination a shared public health responsibility.

She described this as a “moral and societal responsibility around vaccinations”, while acknowledging that parents ultimately make decisions about their children’s healthcare.