UK The Vaccine Whisperer: How One Doctor Is Rebuilding Trust in Immunisation

[Social Media]

 

The Vaccine Whisperer: How One Doctor Is Rebuilding Trust in Immunisation

 

Several times a week, Professor Elizabeth Whittaker invites hesitant parents into her clinic and begins what she calls a gentle, open conversation about vaccinating their children. “Every vaccine’s a win,” she says, “The most important thing is to be kind and to listen. I will often say, ‘I hear your child’s not vaccinated. Do you want to tell me about it?’”

 

As a leading paediatric infectious disease and immunology expert and the research director for West London Children’s Healthcare, Whittaker is at the forefront of the UK’s battle against declining childhood vaccination rates. The stakes are high. Coverage for critical childhood vaccines like the six-in-one jab has fallen from 89% in 2014 to 83%, while MMR uptake is down from 88% to 84%. Measles, she warns, is extraordinarily contagious: “It knocks Covid out of the water. If you put ten unvaccinated people in a room with one infected person, nine of them will get measles.”

 

 

Reframing risk is key. “However bad any side-effects of the vaccine are, the side-effects of the disease are much worse. People will say they had the Covid vaccine and then caught Covid and I will say, ‘Yes but you didn’t end up in intensive care or die, so it worked.’” Whittaker sees parents often arrive defensive, feeling judged before the conversation even begins. “There’s a huge amount of uncertainty and anxiety that whatever they do, they’re wrong,” she explains.

 

Online misinformation and community-specific fears make her job harder. She recalls parents whose children were hospitalised with measles or whooping cough yet still refused vaccination due to what they’d heard in their communities. “My sister still thinks that her child is autistic because they had the vaccine. And so I don’t want to risk that for my child,” one parent told her, referencing the widely debunked claims of Andrew Wakefield.

 

Even families newly arrived in the UK are not immune. One Somali family, previously living in Norway where MMR uptake exceeds 95%, stopped vaccinating their children after moving to London and engaging with local community fears about autism. Others come to her well-prepared for a debate, citing questionable websites. Whittaker challenges them respectfully: “You don’t know the credentials of the people who’ve put this stuff on the internet. Can I show you evidence-based websites?”

 

Concerns also include the number of early childhood vaccines. “Then I talk about the fact that the minute we are born we are exposed to gazillions of bugs everywhere. Our immune system is designed to look at them and manage them.” On Covid-19 vaccines, she notes: “Normally vaccine development takes 20 years, but all the normal stages of vaccine research were done, they just did them in parallel on an accelerated timeline.”

 

In her clinic at St Mary’s Hospital in Westminster — where MMR coverage is just 64.3% — she sees the consequences of low vaccination rates. Measles cases that require intensive care, the return of meningococcal disease, and whooping cough in newborns. “In newborn babies, it’s awful. They get this massive white cell count, their lungs get clogged. They get clogging of the blood vessels in their brain and their hearts give up.”

 

Whittaker, who has worked across continents, sees that low uptake is not limited to any one group. “Orthodox Jewish communities have really poor uptake. Romanian communities have really poor uptake, other black and ethnic minorities have poor uptake. And they all have different reasons.” She emphasises that mandatory vaccination isn’t the answer. “What works is education and communication.”

 

She has seen the worst of these diseases. “We had two or three children a week with meningococcal disease. What kills them is the fact that they go into massive sepsis and they go purple and they lose limbs. So I have a whole cohort of children who I still follow up who lost fingers or thumbs.”

 

Many younger doctors have never seen these cases. “That is vaccination. Vaccines have been the single most important thing we have done in health in the last 30 years.” Citing The Lancet, she notes over 154 million deaths have been prevented globally since 1974 through vaccination — including 146 million children.

 

“They have worked really well here in the UK,” Whittaker says. “We don’t want to lose that advantage.”

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from The Times  2025-06-16

 

 

[Tug]

Time to stop the bs and follow the science not some quack with an agenda,that kind of thinking is making people sick or worse.

[FlorC]

Big Pharma strikes back.

One vaccine whisperer at a time.

[BritManToo]

6 hours ago, Social Media said:

Measles, she warns, is extraordinarily contagious: “It knocks Covid out of the water. If you put ten unvaccinated people in a room with one infected person, nine of them will get measles.”

Extraordinarily contagious, but not very dangerous!

[Celsius]

Big Pharma strikes back say a couple of guys who probably get overloaded on a blue pill before hitting the boyztown

[newbee2022]

9 hours ago, Social Media said:

 

The Vaccine Whisperer: How One Doctor Is Rebuilding Trust in Immunisation

 

Several times a week, Professor Elizabeth Whittaker invites hesitant parents into her clinic and begins what she calls a gentle, open conversation about vaccinating their children. “Every vaccine’s a win,” she says, “The most important thing is to be kind and to listen. I will often say, ‘I hear your child’s not vaccinated. Do you want to tell me about it?’”

 

As a leading paediatric infectious disease and immunology expert and the research director for West London Children’s Healthcare, Whittaker is at the forefront of the UK’s battle against declining childhood vaccination rates. The stakes are high. Coverage for critical childhood vaccines like the six-in-one jab has fallen from 89% in 2014 to 83%, while MMR uptake is down from 88% to 84%. Measles, she warns, is extraordinarily contagious: “It knocks Covid out of the water. If you put ten unvaccinated people in a room with one infected person, nine of them will get measles.”

 

 

Reframing risk is key. “However bad any side-effects of the vaccine are, the side-effects of the disease are much worse. People will say they had the Covid vaccine and then caught Covid and I will say, ‘Yes but you didn’t end up in intensive care or die, so it worked.’” Whittaker sees parents often arrive defensive, feeling judged before the conversation even begins. “There’s a huge amount of uncertainty and anxiety that whatever they do, they’re wrong,” she explains.

 

Online misinformation and community-specific fears make her job harder. She recalls parents whose children were hospitalised with measles or whooping cough yet still refused vaccination due to what they’d heard in their communities. “My sister still thinks that her child is autistic because they had the vaccine. And so I don’t want to risk that for my child,” one parent told her, referencing the widely debunked claims of Andrew Wakefield.

 

Even families newly arrived in the UK are not immune. One Somali family, previously living in Norway where MMR uptake exceeds 95%, stopped vaccinating their children after moving to London and engaging with local community fears about autism. Others come to her well-prepared for a debate, citing questionable websites. Whittaker challenges them respectfully: “You don’t know the credentials of the people who’ve put this stuff on the internet. Can I show you evidence-based websites?”

 

Concerns also include the number of early childhood vaccines. “Then I talk about the fact that the minute we are born we are exposed to gazillions of bugs everywhere. Our immune system is designed to look at them and manage them.” On Covid-19 vaccines, she notes: “Normally vaccine development takes 20 years, but all the normal stages of vaccine research were done, they just did them in parallel on an accelerated timeline.”

 

In her clinic at St Mary’s Hospital in Westminster — where MMR coverage is just 64.3% — she sees the consequences of low vaccination rates. Measles cases that require intensive care, the return of meningococcal disease, and whooping cough in newborns. “In newborn babies, it’s awful. They get this massive white cell count, their lungs get clogged. They get clogging of the blood vessels in their brain and their hearts give up.”

 

Whittaker, who has worked across continents, sees that low uptake is not limited to any one group. “Orthodox Jewish communities have really poor uptake. Romanian communities have really poor uptake, other black and ethnic minorities have poor uptake. And they all have different reasons.” She emphasises that mandatory vaccination isn’t the answer. “What works is education and communication.”

 

She has seen the worst of these diseases. “We had two or three children a week with meningococcal disease. What kills them is the fact that they go into massive sepsis and they go purple and they lose limbs. So I have a whole cohort of children who I still follow up who lost fingers or thumbs.”

 

Many younger doctors have never seen these cases. “That is vaccination. Vaccines have been the single most important thing we have done in health in the last 30 years.” Citing The Lancet, she notes over 154 million deaths have been prevented globally since 1974 through vaccination — including 146 million children.

 

“They have worked really well here in the UK,” Whittaker says. “We don’t want to lose that advantage.”

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from The Times  2025-06-16

 

 

Dear Admins, 

Please publish this article every week on top place.

And make it a duty to read and acknowledge for those who want to be a AN member.

Thank you 🙏