Staff | New Scientist Health

FATAL diseases are threatening a comeback among American children as insurers fail to meet the costs of immunisation.

Half the doctors who responded to a survey by Gary Freed of the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor said they had delayed purchasing new vaccines against childhood diseases like meningitis. Twenty per cent of family doctors said they were considering halting vaccination's of privately insured children.

The combined cost of recommended vaccines trebled between 2000 and 2008, to $1500 per child, and health insurance schemes now seldom cover the full cost (Pediatrics, DOI: 10.1542/peds.2008-2033). "The market does not seem to be responding well to the immunisation needs of our country," says Stephen Berman of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora.

Insurance schemes now seldom cover the full cost of recommended vaccines

In the UK, measles is becoming more common among children whose parents shunned the MMR vaccine following now discredited claims that it causes autism. Last years total of 990 cases in England and Wales had already been surpassed by the end of October, when 1049 cases had been recorded for 2008.