The Parliamentary Health and Social Care Committee states that the Government’s vaccination strategy is ‘a failure’ and should be replaced with a new plan. Vaccination rates in the UK have been falling since around 2012 when pressures on GP services began to increase.
A key part of the solution to improving childhood vaccination rates in not to create new services like “family hubs” but to invest in core general practice services to increase primary care capacity. This needs to be combined with greater incentives for childhood vaccination.
A successful vaccination strategy must strengthen and not sideline general practice. Without substantial reinvestment in general practice and improved incentives, any new structures will struggle to reverse the long-term decline in childhood vaccination coverage in the UK.
GPs provide continuity, trusted relationships, accurate records, recalls, and opportunistic vaccination; all of which are essential for high uptake. When GP capacity is stretched, these functions weaken and coverage falls as we have seen over the past decade.
The decline in our national vaccination rates is not therefore an inevitability; it is a direct consequence of a strained primary care system. We must stop looking for 'quick fixes' and new administrative layers and instead return to what has worked in the past: a well-funded and adequately-staffed General Practice system.
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