Public health expert Professor John Ashton is calling for local directors of public health to provide visible leadership to address the recent systematic deterioration of vaccine coverage levels. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, he describes recent falls in the uptake of other preventative programmes, including bowel, breast and cervical cancer and aortic aneurysm. This, he writes, indicates the fragmentation and weakening of the arrangements for public health, and especially the links with the NHS, since the 2013 reorganisation when directors of public health moved to local government.
* This article was originally published here