Jabs save lives...snake oil doesn't

AT the top of my left arm sits the world's tiniest scar.

- SUSAN LEE

About the size of an orange pip, the skin there remains pearly white even when the rest of me is sporting a summer tan.I don’t mind, though - the mark is a reminder that, as a child, my parents took the decision to keep me safe from some unpleasant diseases and gave the go ahead for a school nurse to jab a needle in my arm.

I'd had other vaccines but this one, something called a BCG, I remember well because it was administered when I was about 13.

We all lined up, a queue of nervous, giggling schoolgirls, for the injection. Someone fainted. But today those same girls will all carry that same scar; a reminder of the miracle of immunisation.

I don’t remember any debate about it. I don’t recall kids opting out. It was just what you did because your parents had signed the consent form.