BB FANS

Press Association
Sunday August 7, 01:29 PM

Students leaving school and heading to university next month are being urged to make sure they are fully immunised against mumps as a major outbreak continues to blight the UK.

There are currently around 1,800 to 2,000 suspected cases of mumps reported by doctors in the UK each week, with rates well up on previous years.

And students are particularly at risk, as the infection spreads easily in environments such as colleges and universities.

The current epidemic is believed to be the result of young adults, who were too old to be routinely offered the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine when it was introduced in 1988, mixing with large numbers in university.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) is now appealing to school leavers who had not previously had two doses of MMR to ensure they are immunised before entering further education.

It is estimated that around 30% of first year students have not previously had two doses of MMR vaccine.

There have already been large outbreaks of mumps in several colleges and universities across the UK.

Figures for England and Wales from the HPA show there were 46,124 notifications of suspected mumps in the first 30 weeks of 2005.

This compared with 5,154 notifications during the same period in 2004 and 2,685 in 2003.

After lab tests, around 60-75% of notifications for mumps are confirmed as genuine cases.

Can I say never never never let your kids get mumps.. i had it as a small boy of 7 and i can vividly remember how ill I was. i ended up in hospital and had them lamced.

I know of a teenager who recently went to hospital with mumps. I also know of a man who had it as a child and it made him infertile. Word of warning. Immunise your children

If you get the MMR jab when you're wee do you get it twice?

It says you need two doses and I definitely had it as a baby because I asked my mum when all this stuff about it came up so do they give you enough then to last for life or do you need it again?

While I was in Germany I went down with mumps and seriously thought I would die. I was in Hospital for a week and off work for almost two months after which I was banned from flying for a further six months. The memory brings tears to my eyes

What's it like when you have mumps? Like what kind of effect does it have?