No mumps vaccine in UK: information for parents

In early 2009, Merck, a multinational pharmaceutical company based in the USA, announced that it had stopped production of its single measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and that it would give no guarantee that it will resume production. This does not affect BabyJabs’ supplies of the single measles and rubella vaccines as we source these from Sanofi Pasteur in Europe. However, Merck is the only manufacturer of an acceptable single mumps vaccine. Merck say that its decision was made purely on commercial grounds because 98% of the vaccines go into their MMR, whilst only 2% are used for the single vaccines.

BabyJabs deeply regrets being unable to offer you the single mumps vaccine at the current time. Merck has stopped manufacturing the mumps vaccine twice before in recent years; on both occasions manufacture resumed after a period of around a year; however, we are unable to give any firm guarantee that this will happen again.

We appreciate that this leaves many parents in a difficult position, with the MMR being the only vaccine available with which to protect their child against mumps.

However, parents can be reassured that mumps is rarely a serious illness, especially in young children under 12 years of age. BabyJabs’ medical director, Dr Richard Halvorsen does not believe that mumps vaccine is essential. “I have always argued that there is no good reason for mass vaccination against mumps, and that most children are actually better off catching the illness when young. At this age,” he says, “the illness is nearly always mild and harmless. In addition, the protection a child gets against further infection is stronger and longer-lasting than that following immunisation.”

Mumps is more likely to cause complications in adult life. Though the fear of infertility is out of proportion to the very small risk, Dr Halvorsen does suggest that one option for parents is to wait until their child is around 12 years of age. They could then consider a blood test to see whether their child is immune naturally (over one half of mumps cases are so mild they are not recognisable as mumps); they could then consider mumps vaccination, either with the single mumps vaccine which will, hopefully, be available again by then or, failing that, consider the MMR which may have less side-effects when given to older children.