How Enfield became the epicentre of England measles outbreak

aol.co.uk · Feb 18, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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Magdalena Laguna is angry at local parents who are failing to vaccinate their children - Jeff GilbertGemma Smith never expected her second period of maternity leave to be this fraught. When I stop her to ask a few questions in a cold park in north London, her baby daughter is pink-cheeked and asleep in a sling across her chest. Born prematurely, she is five months old and still small for her age. Smith pats her bottom absent-mindedly while we talk.“We’re basically hermits now,” she says, with trips out of the house limited to local parks and commons. “When it’s raining, we’re stuck at home all day.”The reason is measles. Smith lives in Enfield, north London, the borough that has become the epicentre of the latest national outbreak of the virus, and caused the UK to lose its World Health Organisation (WHO) measles-free status in January. As a result, she’s avoiding indoor spaces where other parents and children congregate.A third of all cases reported throughout England last month were recorded here, with seven schools and a nursery affected. As of this week, there have been 60 suspected and 34 confirmed cases in the borough, and a number of children have been sent to hospital.Smith’s older daughter has had both doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, given to children on their first birthday and – until very recently – at age three and four months. With one dose, toddlers have 93 per cent protection from measles – with two, that goes up to 97 per cent.Her baby, however, is too young to receive either. “She’s been in and out of hospital since she was born,” Smith says. “I’ve asked if she can have it early, but they say she’s still too small.”Smith is now considering leaving Enfield, and moving temporarily to her mother’s house in Hertfordshire, to reduce the risk of infection. The cafés and baby groups she relied on during her first maternity leave in 2022 are off-limits. Instead, she walks laps of the local park – but only when the weather allows it, which has not been often this winter.At first glance, Enfield is not an obvious place for a public health emergency. In half-term week, its playgrounds are filled with well-dressed families. Semi-detached Georgian houses near Chase Green Gardens sell for well over £1m, and commuter trains shuttle professionals into central London every 15 minutes.But beyond the plusher areas, the borough is one of the most poverty-stricken in the country.Fifty-five percent of Enfield’s children live in income-deprived households, the seventh worst rate of all England’s local authorities. It is also highly diverse – 48 per cent of the population identified as non-white in the 2021 census – with large Somali, Eastern European and Black African communities, many of whom are highly mobile and transient.All of which matters, because people living in areas with high rates of deprivation and a diverse local population are statistically less likely to receive vaccinations than in other parts of Britain.Enfield has the seventh-lowest uptake in the country for the MMR jab, and the proportion of children fully vaccinated by age five has fallen from 71.9 per cent to 65.8 per cent. Nationally, the figure is 84 per cent. The NHS target is 95 per cent.Still, several parts of Britain are both poor and home to sizeable minority ethnic groups, so why is all this happening in Enfield, specifically?“I think the simple answer is that it is one of quite a few low vaccine uptake areas – measles has been rising in the UK for a couple of years and it could have happened in any of them, it just happens to have happened here,” says Enfield council’s director of public health, Dudu Sher-Arami.Others, however, suggest the fact the area is home to communities which have historically been sceptical about the MMR jab mean it is particularly exposed to the virus.Measles is the most infectious disease known to medicine, with a single case causing up to 18 secondary infections.The virus can linger in the air for hours after an infected person (who could be asymptomatic for weeks) has left the room. Once introduced into a pocket of low immunity, it spreads explosively – as many as 90 per cent of unvaccinated individuals who are exposed to someone with measles will go on to contract it themselves.London, public health experts say, is particularly vulnerable. Families in the capital frequently change addresses, switch GPs and cross borough boundaries. Some drop out of the medical system altogether.Up to 160,000 people could be infected if there is a large outbreak in the city, according to modelling by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Many children would require hospital treatment in such a scenario – some would likely die.Such an outcome is not inconceivable given the potency and the fact the UK at large has recorded more than 4,600 infections since 2024. Uptake of the vaccine among the general population has fallen below the 95 per cent level needed for herd immunity, with rates in London lower than in most other parts of England.“A lot of it is also about simply how easy it is to get children vaccinated,” says Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group. “We have huge pressures on the NHS, and if you are a single parent with a number of children and a new baby comes along, it is hard to get to a clinic that is two bus rides away and only open one day a week.”Trust is another major issue. In some groups, historical experiences of discrimination and unethical medical treatment have created deep-rooted mistrust of government and public health institutions.In others, misinformation has taken hold and proven hard to dislodge. Within the Somali community, for example, fears that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism persist, despite the theory being comprehensively debunked decades ago.Data shows that populations with a high proportion of ethnic minorities are far less likely to be vaccinated. When it came to the Covid vaccine, only 28 per cent of black respondents said they would definitely take it, as did 58 per cent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi respondents. This is compared to 84 per cent of white British people and 86 per cent of other Asian groups.Public health officials in Enfield seem reluctant to pursue this line of questioning. “I can see from social media that there are some divisive conversations related to vaccines and immigration, and I don’t want to go down that line,” says Sher-Arami. “The aim is to ensure that whatever community people belong to they are aware of where and how they can get a vaccination.”In Enfield, I speak to Adam, who is of Somali descent. He is with his two energetic toddlers, both of whom are vaccinated. His sister’s children, by contrast, had measles earlier this year – her son caught the virus from a school classmate and was hospitalised. As he became sicker, Adam’s sister acted quickly to vaccinate the younger two, but it was too late and they became ill as well. All three have now recovered after a lengthy illness.“It is very contentious across the wider [Somali] community,” says Adam, who explains that his sister was concerned about autism and other discredited, non-existent side effects. “She now really regrets not just vaccinating them when she was told to as it’s been very stressful. For a period, one of her kids in particular was worryingly unwell.”Tensions in Enfield are clearly running high. Magdalena Laguna lets out a stream of expletives when I ask her why she thinks local parents are failing to vaccinate their children. “Nobody seems to understand that herd immunity is a thing,” she says.“People are mad. One woman I know hasn’t vaccinated her premature baby, who went on to get whooping cough – next, it could be measles and she still says she won’t do it because she doesn’t want her kids to be autistic. That makes me so angry – my son is autistic and it’s certainly not because I vaccinated him.”Like Smith, Akeshia Clarke, who is of Caribbean descent, is worried about her four-month-old daughter catching the virus, and tells me that a woman in her local baby group has refused to vaccinate her children because of fears around side effects. She, too, is hoping to get her child the MMR vaccine early.Monika Zawabzka, pictured with her son, says measles has become a fraught issue in her local school - Jeff GilbertMonika Zawabzka, whose three young children have been vaccinated, agrees it has become a fraught issue in her local school, with parents going head to head over whether they have a public duty to protect the wider community.In an attempt to get on top of the crisis, Enfield council has set up pop-up vaccination clinics across the borough, with local health professionals delivering catch-up jabs to children who may have missed an original appointment.Outreach teams are also visiting schools, children’s centres and faith groups, translating public health leaflets into 20 languages and working with religious leaders to try and increase uptake.Nationally, meanwhile, the second MMR dose was brought forward in January – children will now receive it at 18 months instead of at age three. The hope is that earlier engagement will improve uptake and ensure that toddlers are fully protected sooner.Still, many parents continue to report frustration with cancelled appointments and receptionists failing to answer repeated calls. “There’s also the problem of complacency,” says Pollard of the Oxford Vaccine Group. “People have forgotten how serious measles can be.”One in five children who contract measles will be hospitalised. Complications include pneumonia, deafness and brain inflammation. In rare cases, a child can appear to recover, only to develop a fatal neurological condition years later. Last year, a child in Liverpool with a suppressed immune system died after contracting the virus.The children at greatest risk are those who cannot be vaccinated – babies under one, like Smith’s daughter, children with cancer and those with immune disorders. Her