The UK is letting measles return - and children will pay a deadly price

The UK is letting vaccine-preventable diseases return.

The UK’s loss of its measles elimination status this week is more than an issue of public health. It is a symptom of a deeper complacency - one that is allowing diseases that were once pushed to the brink of extinction to creep back into children’s lives, with devastating results. The surge of measles cases in 2024 did not come from nowhere. It followed a steady, five-year decline in childhood vaccination rates and MMR uptake falling well below the herd immunity threshold. What’s happening now is not a blip. It is a deadly trend, and children will pay the highest price.

Measles is not the only disease staging a comeback. Whooping cough, another potentially deadly illness that many people assumed belonged to history, has surged dramatically.

Alarmingly, every routine childhood vaccine in the UK is now falling below the World Health Organization’s recommended 95 per cent coverage target. Despite this, the UK Government has removed any target for vaccine uptake from NHS planning guidance. But vaccination should not be one of many optional priorities. It is one of the most fundamental, effective public health interventions even invented. If the UK is serious about reversing this downward trend, it must invest in early childhood services that support vaccine confidence and uptake.

The UK is not alone in facing these challenges, but nor is it insulated from the global consequences. The Covid pandemic taught us that disease know no borders. Health systems are only as strong as the weakest among them. Just as childhood immunisation rates fall at home, progress abroad is faltering too. Increasing climate disasters, conflicts and extreme poverty are escalating risks to children’s health and undermining the health systems and services they rely on. Fourteen million children globally remain vulnerable to deadly vaccine preventable diseases.

These threats have been compounded by aid cuts by high income countries, including the UK, pushing global health systems to breaking point. Hard-won progress is already slipping, and without renewed commitment from Governments, the world risks undoing decades of gains in child survival. It is utterly shameful that in 2025, global under-five mortality is expected to rise for the first time this century.

If the UK is serious about building a safer, healthier world and protecting its own health security, it must prioritise children in its overseas development strategy. Millions still lack basic healthcare, nutrition, clean water, and protection. Vaccines save and transform lives, but they cannot compensate for wider systems that are starved of resources. The UK’s commitments to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund are commendable, but children still aren’t being prioritised in UK foreign and development policy. Without significant investment in the health and national systems needed to deliver vaccines and other life‑saving interventions, these pledges risk falling short of making a real difference.

That’s why the UK should commit at least a quarter of its Official Development Assistance budget in its 2026–27 allocations to children and the essential services they need to survive and thrive. We’re already seeing what happens when investment falls short - global efforts to eradicate polio have slashed cases by over 99%, and wild polio now clings on in just two countries - Afghanistan and Pakistan, yet the Global Polio Eradication Initiative is facing a $440m funding gap. Failure to finish the job risks a resurgence of 200,000 new cases every year, including in countries where polio was wiped out long ago.

Governments can decide this is unacceptable. The UK can choose to restore vaccination coverage and step up globally. But the first step is admitting the truth: losing measles-free status in the UK must not be treated as an isolated failure. It is a global wake-up call. And it is one that cannot be ignored.

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Joanna Rea is Director of Advocacy at UNICEF UK.

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