Nursery World - Nursery struck by measles (1)

A measles outbreak at a nursery in Chertsey, Surrey, last week has seen four confirmed cases of the disease and three other children suspected of contracting it.

A baby who attended Cherrywood Nursery, part of the Cherry Childcare group of nurseries, was admitted to hospital while the other children are being treated at home.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) urged all parents with children over the age of six months to have their children immunised after one of the nursery children was confirmed as having measles on Monday (5 January). The other six are still suspected of having the illness.

Dr Peter English, consultant in Communicable Disease Control at the HPA, said, 'Measles became uncommon in this country for a time, but over the last few years we have seen an unprecedented increase in measles cases nationally due to relatively low MMR vaccine uptake over the past decade. This means there is now a large number of children who are not fully vaccinated with MMR, allowing measles to spread easily among unvaccinated children.'

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