• I MUST thank you for the New Journal – it is good to have such a great newspaper each week.

And thank you for the front page story, (Parents warned that lives are at risk as MMR jab take-up slides, April 11).

I am 72 and at 19 had measles and was very unwell; at 28 I had mumps and was unwell and had no lasting effects.

When I was six I remember my cousin, nine, having a party for all her young girl friends to catch the measles that my cousin had contracted.

It is maybe difficult to realise that all of this used to happen to people of all ages before MMR vaccines.

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