The Hague city council is increasing the number of vaccination stations across the city after vaccination rate for children reached dangerously low levels.

The city vaccination rate for 12 infectious childhood diseases, such as measles, polio, mumps, and whooping cough has dropped by 10 percentage points to under the 90% cutting-off point for adequate protection. To prevent a breakout of measles, which is on the rise elsewhere in Europe, the rate needs to be 95%.

The national vaccination rate has been dropping for years  but The Hague is the first of the big cities where none of the 44 local areas reach the 90% mark. In one areathe rate is as low as 59%.

“The rate in [poorer] areas has always been significantly lower and that has always been a major concern,” education chief Hilbert Bredemeijer told broadcaster NOS. “But now for the first time the doubts and mistrust towards vaccination have become a problem across the city,” he said.

The council and the health board said the drop in vaccination rate may be a result of the discussion surrounding the safety and efficiency of the anti-Covid jabs and that this has affected people who previously supported vaccination for children.

“We as a society have forgotten why we are doing this. Measles can have grave consequences, particularly for small children, from eye infections and even encephalitis,” Bredemeijer said. “It’s not a question of if but when the outbreak comes.”

To cut waiting times, the council is upping the number of vaccination sites in the city to all nine family health centres and will invest in more sites in areas with large families.

Community leaders

The council is also going to work with community leaders, including imams, to get the message across to people who are unwilling to vaccinate their children for religious reasons, or because they mistrust the science behind them or the government.

Bredemeijer said the government should mount a national campaign to explain the importance of childhood vaccinations. “We have new groups who are reluctant to vaccinate, people who are educated and interpret the science in their own way. How do we convince them? It’s incredibly complicated,” he said.

The mass immunisation programme  has been a feature of Dutch healthcare since 1957, eradicating illnesses such as polio and measles. However, outbreaks of measles have made a comeback, with over 30,000 cases last year compared, according to World Health Organisation figures.