February 5, 2015 | Katie Couric | Yahoo! Global News
CLBB Advisory Board member and President and Executive Director of Partners in Health Ophelia Dahl spoke with Katie Couric about the measles outbreak and ongoing vaccination debate in the US. Dahl’s father, author Roald Dahl, penned a letter in 1986 about the death of his oldest daughter, Olivia, who was stricken with measles before a vaccine against it was available. Both Dahl and her father called on the public to respect scientific consensus that the vaccines are safe. She stressed the importance of getting good information about science and data and said that even “a little bit of bad science is a dangerous thing.”
In an exclusive interview, Ophelia Dahl, daughter of Roald Dahl, sat down with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric to discuss the letter her father wrote that captured the world’s attention this week, the sister she never knew and the anti-vaccination debate that’s taken over the country.
Roald Dahl, the author of such beloved stories as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach” and “Matilda,” lost his eldest daughter, Olivia, to measles in 1962, when she was just 7 years old.
Her death left the author heartbroken. “He traveled everywhere with a small silver photograph frame with a picture of her inside… Whenever he went on vacation, he took this with him and would put it up in the room wherever he was,” Ophelia recounted.
He penned a public letter in 1988 as a plea to parents and children to take advantage of the vaccine that came too late for his own daughter.
“He thought if he talked about his own personal experience, that would awaken the slumber he felt people were in,” said Ophelia.
At a time when a current measles outbreak is fueling nationwide fear, the letter has resonated with millions of people. Twenty-seven years after Roald Dahl wrote that “parents who now refuse to have their children immunized are putting the lives of those children at risk,” the number of parents choosing not to have their children vaccinated is growing, and the anti-vaccination debate continues.
Read the full article and watch video interview with Ophelia Dahl at Yahoo! Global News.
