A MOTHER is urging parents to ensure their children have the MMR vaccination after a ten-fold rise in measles.

Lindsay Inman, 50, contracted the infectious viral illness when she was three years old before vaccines were available and it has had a major impact on her life.

The illness left her 60 per cent deaf and it is only recently that she has been able to hear birdsong for the first time after being fitted with powerful digital hearing aids.

Ms Inman, who lives in Mark, near Cheddar, said: "I made sure my daughters, now 20 and 16, got the MMR and every test necessary.

"Measles is still rare so people don't see how dangerous it can be."

In the first four months of 2011, the UK has seen a ten-fold rise in measles, with the Health Protection Agency reporting 334 cases compared with 33 in the similar period last year.

In France, 7,000 cases have been reported since January – more than in the whole of 2010. Outbreaks centre on unvaccinated people aged under 25.

Ms Inman recalled her experience of having measles: "I remember being very poorly in a darkened bedroom, wearing my Pinky and Perky pyjamas. The doctor came twice a day for three weeks and it was a long time before I felt better."

Her brother, Ian, 54, also contracted measles, damaging his eyesight.

In Ms Inman's case, the illness damaged nerves connecting the sound- conducting bones inside her ears.

But although her mother thought something was wrong, doctors could find nothing.

Ms Inman struggled through school by learning to lip read.

"School thought I was slow. I couldn't hear and missed a lot so I learned to fade into the background

"I remember feeling very frustrated listening to conversations and having to keep asking what was being said. I left school at 16, with 4 CSEs and was so disappointed, heartbroken, that I'd done so badly and had nothing to show for all that time."

She spent her 21st birthday money seeing a specialist who told her she only had 40 per cent hearing and she said: "It came as a relief to know why I'd found school so difficult."

Lindsey is now at Weston College where she is studying counselling.

She praised the college for the support she had been given, which is enabling her to continue learning.

"The counselling course has been brilliant and I've had incredible help every step of the way until I was fine on my own," she said. "I've now got computerised hearing aids that are so sharp I can hear birds singing for the first time, although the car sounds incredibly loud when I'm driving."