Welcome,
We trust you all had a lovely Mothers' Day. This week following various news pieces on the question of vaccination in both Australia and the UK, we have an article on the vaccination debate. Sydney has just hosted the International White Ribbon conference and our article on domestic abuse highlights the fact that it's going on far more than you'd think, and isn't just physical. Have a lovely week.

By Sophie Cross

Recently the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Telegraph launched a campaign to give child care centres and pre schools the right to ban unvaccinated kids under a proposed "no jab, no play" policy.

The campaign has been launched to stop the rise in the number of children succumbing to preventable diseases, because parents are failing to have them fully immunised. The vaccination debate is also running high in the UK where a measles outbreak has affected almost 1000 people in the Swansea area of Wales, and is believed to have caused the death of a 25-year-old man.

In Australia, the death of a 10-year-old schoolboy from Chickenpox in 2009 shocked parents enough to take vaccination seriously. Even for Chickenpox, which we all remember from our childhood, which can kill. A vaccine has been available in Australia since 2005.

My own brother, as a child, developed thrombocytopenia (a disease that affects the production of platelets in the blood) following a nasty bout of Mumps. He was covered in bruises because his blood wouldn't clot. He was in constant danger of internal bleeding. He wasn't allowed to even get out of bed by himself in case he fell and caused uncontrollable bleeding. He was hospitalised for a long time and had to endure unbelievable pain through bone marrow tests in his spine.

Back then kids weren't vaccinated against Mumps as a matter of course, but I bet he wishes he had been. Mumps, measles, rubella and chickenpox don't just stop at those viruses. Serious viruses can lead to many other equally or much more life threatening illnesses.
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Sydney has just hosted the International White Ribbon Conference, which aims to build awareness for and action against all forms of domestic violence around the world.

It's estimated that at least 23% of women in Australia have experienced domestic or family violence, which, according to the Australian Bureau of statistics, accounts for around 2.2 million women in Australia.

That's a huge figure and means that the likelihood is that you are either in a domestically violent relationship yourself, or you know someone who is. And Psychological violence, though just as damaging as physical, is often un-noticed by people outside the family and even unrecognised by the victim.

While domestic violence can occur both to men and women, it's widely recognised that women experience domestic violence at far greater rates than men do, and women and children often live in fear as a result of the abuse that is used by men to maintain control over their partners.

Domestic and family violence occurs in all sections of our community and across all cultures. Being abused is NOT a normal part of domestic or family life. Don't think that because you live in a well-to-do community that it doesn't apply to you or to your neighbours. In fact it could be argued that psychological violence particularly is actually more prevalent in middle class, educated areas.
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