THE number of measles cases has increased sixfold in Oxfordshire in the last year.

Dr Eamonn O'Moore, the county's consultant in communicable disease control, is urging parents to ensure their children have the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab following the surge in cases.

In 2004, there were no cases reported, in 2005 there were four, and so far this year there have been 12, despite a healthy take-up rate of the triple jab of 92 per cent. The national average is 82 per cent.

The majority of cases was in under fives and Dr O'Moore said: "There has been a three-fold increase in the past two years.

"We do not want a repeat of the situation in some parts of the country where there have been outbreaks involving hundreds.

"We have not yet reached the tipping point, but we need to achieve herd immunity so that measles cannot take hold in the community, but for that to happen the take-up rate needs to be about 96 or 97 per cent.

"The MMR vaccine is perfectly safe and I would urge all parents to get their children vaccinated. The single jab, which is not provided on the NHS, also provides some protection, but the children are more vulnerable because injections are spaced out over a period of time.

"Measles can cause very serious health problems."

The take-up rate for the MMR fell after Dr Andrew Wakefield suggested a link with autism, while Prime Minister Tony Blair refused to say if his son Leo had received the jab.

So far this year there had been 449 confirmed measles cases across England and Wales the highest number ever recorded compared to 77 in 2005.

The latest figures were released by the Health Protection Agency after an HPA consultant warned of a large-scale outbreak.

Dr Peter English, of the Surrey and Sussex HPA, said 106 cases had been confirmed in his area alone, and attributed the spread to parents being afraid to give their child the MMR vaccine.

Dr Mary Ramsay, a consultant epidemiologist with the Health Protection Agency, said this year's cases did not yet constitute a national outbreak, but also advised using the MMR.

She said: "We have been experiencing a number of localised outbreaks this year."

But she added although numbers had reached their highest levels since the HPA began monitoring them in 1995, high numbers of cases had been recorded in previous years with 438 in 2003 and 191 in 2004.

And prior to monitoring, she said, unconfirmed cases went into the thousands. 86,000 were recorded in 1988 when the MMR vaccine was first introduced. This year, there had been 1,777 unconfirmed cases.