Blair hits back at MMR 'hysteria'

A worried Tony Blair today launched an all-out defence of the MMR vaccine, accusing the media of "hysteria" and the Tories of playing politics in a way which would see more children die.

Downing Street moved to crush a suggestion the Prime Minister had begun to wobble on the issue and ordered officials to look at ways for the NHS to offer three single jabs, seen by some to be safer.

"I can give you a complete, categoric denial," said the Prime Minister's spokesman. "The story is wrong. Full stop. No equivocation. It's wrong." No10 acknowledged the medical evidence was under "continuous review". Officials also accepted parents had concerns over fears that the triple vaccine might, in some children, trigger autism and bowel disease. The spokesman added: "It is whether you play on those concerns or try to address them in a rational way. We have media hysteria. What we should address are the real questions. The questions are: Is MMR safe?

Yes. Have alternatives got real problems? Yes."

Behind the blitz on the doubters is growing government alarm that confidence in MMR could sink to a point where the return of mumps, measles and rubella on a wide scale becomes a real threat. There is also barely hidden grief in Downing Street over the criticism of Mr Blair's refusal to confirm whether his son Leo has had the triple vaccine. Health minister Yvette Cooper today confirmed that both her children had been given MMR.

Shadow health secretary Dr Liam Fox described the Government's immunisation policy as "a public health disaster". Although he agreed the MMR vaccine was the most effective option, he said if large numbers were declining to use it then single inoculations were better than nothing at all.

The Government hit back hard. No 10 said the experience in Japan, when MMR was abandoned because of a supply cut, was that fewer parents undertook the six visits needed for separate immunisations, with the result that more children died.

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