Serious diseases from the 1950s returning amid fall in vaccination …

Illnesses that have not been seen since the 1950s and 60s are returning because of falls in vaccination rates, public health bosses have warned.

MPs on the health and social care select committee heard that conditions including polio, diphtheria and measles were on the rise. Dame Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency, warned of a resurgence of “really serious diseases”.

Speaking at a hearing of the committee, she said: “We have seen internationally cases of acute flaccid paralysis [a neurological complication of polio], which really we are completely unused to, that we haven’t seen since the 1950s and 60s.” Recent years have seen dips in UK vaccination rates. The NHS offers childhood jabs against a variety of conditions including measles, mumps, rubella,