A small group of young adults are short of a mumps vaccine

Young people at the University of Central Lancashire's base in Newton Rigg, near Penrith, are being offered the MMR vaccinations on Wednesday.

There have been a number of mumps cases in Cumbria, in line with other parts of the country.

Health experts believe there is a group of young people whose childhood mumps protection is wearing off.

Dr Nigel Calvert, from the North Cumbria health protection unit, said: "When MMR was first introduced in 1988 it was just given as one dose.

"And we thought at the time that it would give long levels of protection against all three diseases.

"But in about 1992 or 1993 there was quite a big outbreak of measles in teenagers at Egremont.

'Enough susceptible'

"We looked into that and it turned out that most of the kids had actually been vaccinated and it was wearing off.

"So on the back of that to head off a national measles epidemic they had a big catch-up campaign, but there wasn't enough mumps vaccine."

He said a number of young people received extra measles and rubella vaccinations, but not mumps protection.

"So there are enough susceptible people especially, in universities and colleges etc, to get transmission of mumps," he said.