South Africa is in the grip of a Measles epidemic that has affected over 2,000 people and killed four, with the majority of cases occurring in the Guateng region.

But an unusual feature of this outbreak is that it isn't necessarily poorer families being effected. The South African Department of Health have noted an unusual pattern to the cases.

Having been given space by the Daily Mail to write a column on vaccination two days ago, Dr Richard Halvorsen has today been given air-time by Radio 4. The programme is available here on iPlayer and an unverified transcript is available here.

The tediously predictable has happened. The statistics are in for (most of) 2008, and cases of Measles have risen to the sorts of levels we've not seen for years - bringing us ever closer to a new major epidemic. 1,217 cases of measles were recorded from January to November 2008 - November alone saw more cases than the whole of 1996 (115 vs 113).

[BPSDB] Just when you thought that after 10 tedious years the MMR Hoax was finally dying a death, no less an authority than the Science Museum have managed to screw things up again. As reported over on Thinking is Dangerous, the Museum's staff have taken it upon themselves to recommend anti-vaccine campaigners JABS as an appropriate source of advice for concerned parents. If you haven't heard of JABS before and don't know why this is such a big deal, check out this Guardian piece on them.

So in the best British tradition I've written them a stern letter, which you can see below. First, here's a list of other bloggers writing about this. If you're a blogger and you've written a piece on this or a letter of complaint, please send me the link and I'll post it here. I also urge people to write to the Science Museum about this - you can e-mail them at feedback@nmsi.ac.uk.