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Letters | Hong Kong’s measles outbreak: Failure to vaccinate children should be seen as child abuse

  • The potentially deadly consequences of diseases like measles should convince parents to take their responsibility seriously
  • In some countries, children who are not vaccinated are banned from schools and other public places. Hong Kong should follow suit

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
A boy in Las Pinas City in the Philippines receive a measles vaccine during a nationwide immunisation programme in February. Photo: EPA-EFE
The most upsetting thing about the current measles outbreak is that it was entirely preventable (“Don’t allow the anti-vaccine movement to spread through Hong Kong”, April 15). Failure to vaccinate children, caused by either intimidatory edicts from religious fundamentalists of all colours or conspiracy theorists peddling bunkum that flies in the face of decades of medical scientific evidence, is the main reason.
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If you see a child being abused by his or her parents by, for example, physical violence or malnutrition, the authorities could step in and protect that child. Failure to vaccinate a child could leave them susceptible to pneumonia or death and is tantamount to child abuse – and must be similarly acted on. Adults can believe anything they like, but not if it affects children or others around them.

As is happening now in some countries, children who are not vaccinated or otherwise immune should be banned from schools and other public places. And non-immune persons should be banned from flying – why should airport workers have to suffer the brunt of other governments’, religious leaders’ and conspiracy theorists’ negligence and cruelty?

Lee Faulkner, Lamma 

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Not vaccinating pets is not only wrong, it’s actually animal cruelty and should be treated as such. Photo: Edmond So
Not vaccinating pets is not only wrong, it’s actually animal cruelty and should be treated as such. Photo: Edmond So
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