Immunisation protects not only your child but young babies, other children, and adults as well

Before the second world war, diseases such as Diptheria, Tetanus, Polio, Measles and Tuberculosis killed millions of children across Europe every year.

Many more were left permanently paralysed, disfigured or with permanent health problems by the effects of these diseases.

In those days, the death of a child from disease was an everyday experience in the towns and cities of Britain and this enormous level of pain and suffering for millions of families was simply part and parcel of family life.

So when routine vaccinations were introduced in the UK through the 1950s, millions of parents had their children vaccinated without a second thought and as a consequence, the number of children catching these diseases was reduced significantly year on year - dwindling from epidemic proportions to almost zero by the end of the 20th Century.

However, thanks to over fifty years of successful vaccination, a new generation of parents have grown up never having experienced the horrors these diseases cause.

Instead, worries about reported side-effects of combined vaccines has led some parents to conclude that the side-effects of the vaccine are worse than the disease it was designed to prevent.

To think this way would be missing the point. Though these diseases have been almost eliminated from the UK, they have not gone away. They are still widespread in many other countries were there are no comprehensive immunisation programmes.

Without vaccination, a child is left exposed to an outbreak in the UK and this exposure is a greater threat to a child than any of the reported side-effects of vaccination.

Indeed, if we ever returned to the levels of death and disease experienced in our recent history it would be regarded as a national emergency, which is why universal immunisation - the vaccination of all children from these deadly diseases - remains of paramount importance.

Though not every individual responds in the same way to vaccination (some people have a higher level of immunity than others), your child should be protected for the rest of their life from polio, measles, mumps, rubella and Meningitis C, Diptheria, Tetanus and whooping cough after a full vaccination programme of both primary and booster shots.

Vaccination programmes have saved the lives of millions of Britons and they remain the most successful medical innovation. Why would you not want your child to be part of that success?