Samoa pulls MMR vaccine following two deaths -
Expert Reaction
10 July
2018
The Samoan Government has
seized supplies of the MMR vaccine following the deaths of
two children.
Reports suggest the children, both one-year-olds, died within minutes of receiving the vaccine on Friday. Few details are currently available, so these comments may be updated if further information becomes available.
The Science Media Centre gathered
expert commentary, please feel free to use these comments in
your reporting. Further commentary will be posted on our
website.
________________________________________
Dr
Helen Petousis-Harris, vaccinologist, University of
Auckland; Director of Research, Immunisation Advisory
Centre, comments:
"MMR is a vaccine given
after one year of age to protect against three diseases;
measles, mumps and rubella.
"MMR vaccines have been used for decades all over the world including New Zealand and there is a long track record of safety. The vaccine used in New Zealand and Samoa is extremely safe.
"There has never been a death associated with the administration of this vaccine in New Zealand.
"Rarely a tragic event
such as this occurs. There are two main reasons why
something like this might happen.
• Medical error,
where the vaccine is prepared for injection incorrectly and
the wrong substance is injected.
• Contamination of the
vaccine due to leaving it at room temperature for a long
period of time.
"Until we have more information about the
events we cannot speculate about what might have happened
but we are endeavouring to get more details.
"We first need to understand what happened, and then what can be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
"Almost every child in the world receives an MMR vaccine or similar. Everywhere these vaccines have been used child mortality has gone down.
"When the MMR vaccine has been administered correctly we see vaccine-related [adverse] events occurring around a couple of weeks later."