'My son almost died from measles at eight months old - it's a terror no child should experience'

It's been 22 years, and Catherine Cooper has never forgotten when her eldest child, Toby, contracted measles.

Now she has a stern warning for anti-vax parents who actively choose not to vaccinate their children against potentially deadly diseases.

Toby was just eight months old when he caught measles, a highly infectious and potentially harmful viral illness that begins with cold-like symptoms and then a rash.

Catherine, now 54, believes Toby became infected at the creche at the gym she used to go to, back when the family was living in South London.

At the time, Catherine's "normal little baby" was too young to have the MMR vaccine,which offers protection against measles, mumps, and rubella. Looking back, the distressing situation she found herself in makes her angry.

READ MORE: 'My daughter died after getting measles as a baby - this is my plea'

Sunday Times bestselling author Catherine, who now lives in the South of France, told the Mirror: "I don't think I was a particularly fretful mother. I mean, obviously, he was my first child, but I wasn't someone who was overly fretful. I wasn't someone who was at the doctor every five minutes or anything with him."

Although Toby had had all the vaccinations he was supposed to have in the first few months of his life, but had to wait until he was one to have his MMR jab.

Catherine noticed there was something up when Toby developed a rash, red eyes and a temperature, and took him to the doctor's. She recalled: "He was obviously ill, but normally if he was ill, I'd give him Calpol and keep an eye on him and normally, like most babies, he'd be better later that day or the next day.

"But that time, I think maybe it was because of the rash, I thought, 'No, that's not really right, he needs to go to the doctor'."

Catherine thankfully managed to get a doctor's appointment quite quickly. She was also fortunate in that their "doctors were pretty good, particularly with babies".

After ringing the GP's surgery and informing them that her baby had a rash, Catherine and Toby were brought in quite quickly. She remembered: "I remember somebody, I think it was probably the doctor, saying, 'Okay, let's see that baby with the rash next because we don't want him sitting around in the waiting room'. So I took him in, and it was a middle-aged doctor, and she said, 'Well, you know, I'm sorry to tell you, but it looks like he's got measles'."

Expressing the shock she felt upon hearing this distressing news, Catherine added: "I was like, 'what?' Because, as far as I was concerned, that was something that didn't really happen anymore. It was really rare. And she actually said, 'Do you mind if I show my colleague, who is a younger doctor, because she's probably never seen a case of measles before?'. And I said, 'No, that's fine'. So she brought her in and they had a look at him."

The stunned mum was then told to take her child home and care for him there, all while keeping "a close eye on him". After a quiet week of being treated with Calpol and lots of rest, Toby came out the other side absolutely fine. She knows, however, that things could have been very different, and that her son had been very "lucky".

In severe cases, measles can result in serious complications, including meningitis, blindness, pneumonia and seizures.

A child recently died at Liverpool's Alder Hey Children's Hospital from measles, which has expressed alarm over "the increasing number of children and young people who are contracting measles".

For Catherine, this incident brings back dreadful memories. At the time when little Toby fell ill, South London was something of a "hot spot" for parents who weren't getting their kids vaccinated.

This was back when many still followed the advice of anti-vaccine activist and fraudster Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 Lancet MMR autism study inaccurately linked autism to the MMR vaccine.

Alarmist publicity over this widely debunked study resulted in a steep decline in vaccination uptake, resulting in various measles outbreaks.

Between the years 1996 and 2002, rates of MMR vaccination dropped from 91.8 per cent to 81 per cent in England and Wales. In some regions, including in London, the coverage rate dropped to less than 60 per cent.

For parents like Catherine, who fully support vaccinations, they too were left suffering as outbreaks spread into creches and nurseries. She's now urged others to consider other people's children as well as their own before making what is all too often viewed as an individual choice.

Catherine said, "It hadn't been my choice. He wasn't old enough for MMR. If I had chosen for him not to have MMR, then I would have blamed myself, but I didn't because he wasn't old enough, so I blamed whoever had made that choice, almost for him, really.

"And I think this is what people don't really appreciate, is they're not only making a choice for their own child, they're making a choice for all the other children or people that that child potentially comes into contact with.

"And particularly if you're really immunosuppressed or if you have other illnesses, it can be particularly dangerous. But even for a healthy child, it can be dangerous."

Disgraced Wakefield was struck off the medical register for "serious professional misconduct" in 2010, following an inquiry by the General Medical Council (GMC), while The Lancet has now fully retracted Wakefield's discredited study.

Unfortunately, Wakefield's shadow still looms large and, in a world of widespread misinformation, experts have noted a disturbing trend. Indeed, as per the UK Health Security Agency, there were 2,911 laboratory-confirmed measles cases in England in 2024 - the highest annual number on record since 2012.

With a wealth of readily available information at their fingertips, one could presume that today's parents would have the ability to research and debunk myths with greater ease than those before them.

Catherine isn't surprised to find this isn't the case. Her own painful experiences have left her with "an almost unhealthy interest" in misinformation and conspiracy theories.

She explained: "It's mainly the growth of social media. It's now very easy to take your theory and get it out there, and if you do it in the right way, I mean, the right way for you, people will believe it. I think back in the day, I guess these people probably still existed, but they couldn't get their message out quite so rampantly.

"In some ways it is surprising because with the internet it should be easy to keep yourself informed, but in some ways it's not surprising because there's so much bad information out there that's very easily accessible and of course, the way the algorithms work, once you start looking at this thing, you're fed more and more and more until it becomes self-perpetuating."

Toby is now a 23-year-old engineering student, but for Catherine, the memory of caring for her sick baby remains, and the ordeal has had a significant impact on her life.

It even inspired part of the plot of her second novel, The Chateau - although you'll have to purchase the twisty thriller for yourself to find out more.

The fictional world aside, Catherine now takes every opportunity she sees to spread awareness about the importance of vaccinations and tackling health misinformation. However, she admits it isn't always easy to persuade those who are already stuck in this fixed mindset.

She reflected: "It seems to have blown up so much, particularly since Covid. I do think it's a worry because once somebody's got into this mindset, it's very, very hard to get them out of it. While I do like to speak about my experience of this, part of me knows that it's probably not going to make that much difference because people who are really, really ingrained in it are going to just be like, 'Oh okay, well she would say that'."

Issuing a warning to others, Catherine continued: "I think people kind of have the attitude of, 'Oh, it won't happen to me, it won't happen to my child, and it does happen. Toby was lucky; he was fine, but some children aren't."

Do you have a story to share? Email me at julia.banim@reachplc.com

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