Since our Board was established in March 2000 we have been focusing on the delivery of immunisation services. This is reflected by our Board establishing a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency Immunisation Committee in June 2000. Quite apart from focusing on the various immunisation programmes, two major projects were managed:- (i) Meningococcal C Vaccination Programme, which commenced in October 2000 and (ii) a strategy to address measles outbreak which occurred early 2000 and associated immunisation campaign. Regrettably, the uptake levels of the MMR in particular have fallen below the national target uptake level of95%. Some DED's in our Board's area have a particularly poor uptake as can be seen from the map in Section 9. In general, the DED's with the poor uptake levels are areas of high deprivation and morbidity. These areas have also presented with a very low uptake in the recent Breastcheck campaign and unfortunately, also have very high levels of substance abuse. There are of course other reasons affecting low uptake levels of MMR, such as Adverse publicity in relation to the vaccine. Lack of public awareness of measles, mumps and rubella and the health risk associated with same. In the short period of the measles outbreak in our Board's area during 2000, three deaths occurred associated with measles. In addition there was quite a significant number of patients admitted to hospital for treatment. We are now embarking on an emergency programme with the aim of improving the uptake or MMR. This will be done by a very intensive and focused awareness programme and a combined effort between out Board's community staff and local general practices to encourage parents to present for consultation and advice which, hopefully, will have the desired outcome of improving immunisation uptake. The programme will commence in the areas shown with the lowest uptake rates. I commend our Board's Immunisation Committee for producing this information pack which will be widely circulated to our Board's key staff, general practitioners, public and local representatives and will also be available to the public as required.