BRITISH children are more at risk from killer diseases than some poverty-stricken countries receiving taxpayer cash towards vaccine rollouts, The Sun on Sunday can reveal.
NHS figures show that uptake here for the MMR jab, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella, has hit rock bottom.
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In England and Wales, just 83.9 per cent of children are fully vaccinated against measles, well below the 95 per cent threshold needed to prevent outbreaks.
In the worst area, Hackney, East London, just 67.7 per cent have had their first shot by the age of two.
But official data for the East African country of Eritrea boasts a 93 per cent rate for the first jab.
Dr Ben Kasstan-Dabush, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “The fact very poor African countries have significantly better childhood vaccination rates than the UK should be a wake-up call to the Government.
“To reverse this deadly UK trend, we need to design public health messages with affected communities to convey that measles is dangerous — not benign.
Conspiracy theories
“We need catch-up campaigns and tailored outreach in hard-hit areas and under-vaccinated communities. And we need ongoing efforts to debunk misinformation.”
Eritrea’s measles and rubella jab rollout has been helped by more than £5billion in UK aid to Gavi, the global vaccine fund backed by tech billionaire Bill Gates, since it was founded in 2000.
In 2023 and 2024 Gavi spent £1million on a vaccination drive in Eritrea, where human rights abuses are such that Eritreans were the most common nationality crossing the Channel in small boats during the first three months of 2025.
Rwanda, which received close to £1.5million from Gavi for its measles jabs rollout in 2024, has 93 per cent of children fully protected. And Kenya, which is to receive £9.4million from by 2026, has an 88 per cent rate for first doses.
This month, the Foreign Office announced a further £1.25billion commitment to the Geneva-based organisation, which has given vaccines to more than a billion children in developing countries.
Our revelations come as a measles epidemic spreads across the country. Last month a child died in Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital after becoming ill with measles and other health problems.
Jonathan Grigg, professor of paediatric respiratory and environmental medicine at Queen Mary University, London, says the NHS needs to boost its vaccinations.
He said: “It must be up to our health system to ensure all children are vaccinated against measles and to prevent deaths. Something has gone wrong where community vaccination rates are so low.”
But experts said that one of the biggest issues is anti-vaccine conspiracy theories spreading across the internet.
Professor Stephen Griffin, a virologist at the University of Leeds, said: “There is a sinister, well-funded network of people spreading disinformation that exacerbates hesitancy and plays on insecurities.
“It is vital that we counter these movements with education about the risks of infectious disease.”
Measles coverage in the UK is at a ten-year low and health chiefs are scrambling to catch up as cases rise. In 2024 there were 2,911 confirmed cases in England, the highest number since 2012.
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It led to the UK Health Security Agency declaring a national incident. The lowest vaccination coverage rates of five-year-olds who have had both MMR doses were found in London, with the borough of Hackney the worst at 60.8 per cent.
In Manchester, the rate was 74.6 per cent, Birmingham had 74.8 per cent and Newcastle 85.2 per cent.
The long-discredited link between the MMR vaccine and autism, first sparked by disgraced physician Andrew Wakefield in 1998, was once to blame for people turning away from the jabs.
Then pandemic disruption, a lack of access to services and difficulty booking appointments, along with language and cultural barriers, became the problem.
Now it is social media. Helen Bedford, professor of child public health at Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said parents want questions answered about the vaccine but don’t know who to ask.
She said: “In the absence of an obvious source they look on social media. Although there are some good sources of information, there is a great deal of misinformation, some of which has been put there with the intention of misinforming.”
I am not a negligent parent and blaming mums like me for the rise in measles outbreaks is simply stupid scaremongering.
Anti-vaxxer Biba Tayna
Thousands of TikTok clips and Facebook groups share bogus claims about the MMR vaccine, branding it “unsafe” and “ineffective” and saying doctors try to vaccinate children to make money.
One viral Instagram video, which racked up more than 70,000 likes, claimed kids should be given vitamin A instead — despite high doses potentially being fatal.
Mum-of-six Kayla Goodearl was horrified when two of her children, Esmae and Ronnie, broke out in “angry red spots”. The 35-year-old from Strood, Kent, said: “Ronnie was only nine months when he got it so he was too young for the jab.
“Esmae, who is 11 months older, was on the waiting list. My older children had been vaccinated and were OK. But Ronnie and Esmae were very poorly. Some nights their temperatures skyrocketed. I was worried they’d have seizures.
“Measles outbreaks are on the rise — and it’s down to unvaccinated children and their selfish parents. Unvaccinated kids are a danger to other kids.”
But anti-vaxxer Biba Tayna, 44, from Clitheroe, Lancs, has refused the MMR jab for her two youngest children because she says her eldest son, now 20, had a bad reaction.
She said: “I won’t let my daughters have the jab. They’ve had rashes and coughs combined with high temperatures. It likely was measles but I didn’t take them to a doctor for diagnosis.
“They have their own natural immunity. I am not a negligent parent and blaming mums like me for the rise in measles outbreaks is simply stupid scaremongering.
“My unvaccinated daughters are proof I am correct.”
But Health Minister Ashley Dalton said the “falling vaccination rate” is putting “extra strain on our NHS” and added: “It’s vital that parents get their children jabbed.
“The NHS app makes it easier for people to understand which vaccines they need and book an appointment for themselves or their children.”
