Roald Dahl's powerful letter urging parents to vaccinate their children is heartbreaking.

A heartbreaking letter written by Roald Dahl in support of vaccination has gone viral 27 years after it was penned.

Roald Dahl‘s letter urging parents to vaccinate their children has resurfaced as the measles outbreak in the US continues to grow and fuel debate against anti-vaxxers.

In 1962 the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory‘s eldest daughter, Olivia, died of measles age seven.

Dahl’s daughter – whom he dedicated James and the Giant Peach and The BFG to – died before the measles vaccine was invented.

Read more: Can parents sue the anti-vaxxers for this measles epidemic?

Almost 20 years later and two years before his own death, Dahl wrote a passionate plea to parents to vaccinate their children, so that they could avoid the heartbreak he endured.

As reports continue to come out of the US of more children contracting measles due to a cluster of unvaccinated people, Dahl’s words have never been more poignant.

You can read his words below…

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it.

Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In 12 hours she was dead.

The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her.

That was 24 years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her.

On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunised against measles.

I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

It is not yet generally accepted that measles can be a dangerous illness. Believe me, it is. In my opinion parents who now refuse to have their children immunised are putting the lives of those children at risk.

In America, where measles immunisation is compulsory, measles like smallpox, has been virtually wiped out.

Here in Britain, because so many parents refuse, either out of obstinacy or ignorance or fear, to allow their children to be immunised, we still have a hundred thousand cases of measles every year.

Out of those, more than 10,000 will suffer side effects of one kind or another. At least 10,000 will develop ear or chest infections. About 20 will die.

LET THAT SINK IN.

Every year around 20 children will die in Britain from measles.

So what about the risks that your children will run from being immunised?

They are almost non-existent. Listen to this. In a district of around 300,000 people, there will be only one child every 250 years who will develop serious side effects from measles immunisation! That is about a million to one chance.

I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation.

So what on earth are you worrying about? It really is almost a crime to allow your child to go unimmunised.

The ideal time to have it done is at 13 months, but it is never too late. All school-children who have not yet had a measles immunisation should beg their parents to arrange for them to have one as soon as possible.

Incidentally, I dedicated two of my books to Olivia, the first was ‘James and the Giant Peach’. That was when she was still alive. The second was ‘The BFG’, dedicated to her memory after she had died from measles.

You will see her name at the beginning of each of these books. And I know how happy she would be if only she could know that her death had helped to save a good deal of illness and death among other children.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) there were 173,330 reported cases of measles worldwide in 2017, with 111,000 reported deaths, many of them children under the age of five. Despite this, the advent of the measles vaccination has prevented an estimated of 21.2 million deaths from 2000 and 2017.

Although Australia was said to be declared free of measles in 2014 by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, cases have re-appeared sporadically since. The AIHW estimates 93 per cent of Australian two year olds were fully vaccinated against the disease in 2017, but despite this, they do state that vaccination rates vary depending on where the child lives.

Most recently three children were reported to hospital staff with the disease within a week from December 26, 2018 to January 3, 2019, with NSW Health confirming the diagnoses.