A HUGE vaccination programme for staff and students at the University of Kent at Canterbury is underway following an outbreak of mumps.

Six students living on the campus were found to have contracted the viral infection towards the end of last week, prompting university medical staff to seek advice from the Kent Health Protection Unit.

Clinical director Dr Mathi Chandrakumar informed them that the disease is very mild in the vast majority of cases and that most people have immunity from it, either through vaccination or having contracted it previously.

But the decision to offer the university's 10,000 students and 2,000 members of staff vaccinations was prompted by the slight risk of more serious health consequences.

Dr Chandrakumar told a press conference: "Very rarely mumps can affect other parts of your body such as the pancreas or it can affect your ovaries or your testes. Seldom, very rarely, it can result in infertility.

"It can spread to the lining of the brain, in which case you can get meningitis. Again, that is very rare."

He added that there was only a very limited risk of mumps, which is passed on through saliva and by coughing and sneezing, spreading to the wider community.

Secretary and Registrar at the university, Nick McHard, said he was confident the three day vaccination programme, backed up by a telephone helpline, would be sufficient to nip any more large-scale outbreak in the bud.

He said: "We've moved very quickly on this. We have mechanisms that we can put in place for this and so the vaccination programme is now beginning within a week of the first outbreak being notified to us."

Students living on campus were informed of the outbreak on Tuesday morning when letters were placed under their doors. Any of them born before 1987 is unlikely to have had the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine, which was introduced for babies of 12 months in 1988.

But university staff said the undergraduates were heeding calls not to worry unduly.

Members of the general public with concerns about mumps should call NHS Direct on 0845 46 47 or visit the NHS Direct website at www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk