The mother of a 10-year-old girl who died from a rare complication of measles years after contracting the disease has urged parents to “save lives” by getting their own children vaccinated.
Becky Archer’s daughter Renae contracted measles when she was five months old – too young to be vaccinated – and went on to have her measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine at 12 months after appearing to recover.
But when she was 10, Renae developed a rare brain disease caused by her previous infection and died.
Her mother is now urging parents to make sure their own children are vaccinated to lessen the spread of disease, as it emerged the uptake of childhood vaccines for conditions like polio and measles is at its lowest level for over a decade.
Ms Archer says her daughter might not have caught measles if more children had been vaccinated.
The NHS advises parents to get their children vaccinated against a range of childhood diseases, with a programme set out to ensure maximum protection.
But in 2023/24, new data shows not a single vaccine met the target needed to ensure diseases cannot spread among children.
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Ms Archer told Sky News: “Vaccination does save lives. If other children were vaccinated it might not be so widespread and Renae wouldn’t have got the measles – and she would still be here with us today.”
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“It’s really important to urge parents to get vaccinations done. Getting your child vaccinated can save other people’s lives,” Ms Archer added.
She explained how “always smiling” Renae caught measles at five months old, but was “fit and healthy” shortly afterwards.
Then, when she was 10, Ms Archer got a call “out of the blue” from the young girl’s school to say that she had suffered a seizure.
“She continued to have seizures for around three weeks,” the mother said. “That’s when the hospital did an MRI and realised she had swelling on her brain.
“At this point they still didn’t know what was causing it. It wasn’t until maybe a month later and in that time her motor functions shut down slowly, and then she went into ICU and she was there for around a week before we found out that it was SSPE and it was going to be fatal.
“And then she passed away around a week later.”
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Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis – or SSPE – is a rare complication of measles which typically appears months or years after contracting the infection. It is usually fatal, and can cause intense muscle jerks and seizures.
Ms Archer described her daughter as a “happy little girl”, who was an amazing daughter and sister to Bradley and Denver.
“She was really clever – a lot older than her age.”
The mother made her plea to fellow parents as it emerged the percentage of children receiving vaccines against diseases such as polio and measles has fallen to its lowest level for more than a decade.
At least 95% of children should receive their set of vaccine doses for each illness to achieve herd immunity – which stops illnesses from transmitting across the population – according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The data shows that in 2023/24 91.9% of five-year-olds had received one dose of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the lowest level since 2010/11, while just 83.9% had received both doses, the lowest since 2009/10.
