My son Nathan was one last month and is, according to the handy vaccination calendar sent to all parents by the French national health service, due for the MMR jab. The shot is fully reimbursable, and while not compulsory is 'strongly recommended'.

Chantal Le Henin, Nathan's paediatrician, was not surprised when I tackled her on the subject. She had heard about the row in Britain but said she wasn't in a position to judge it. 'All I can say is we have never had the slightest problem with this vaccine in France. It's a standard jab, available here for a decade and fully reimbursable for the past two years. Nearly 90 per cent of French children now have it.'

The French have had their share of health scandals. More than 1,200 people have died and 3,600 diagnosed HIV-positive since the national transfusion service, ignoring successive scientific warnings in the mid-1980s, used contaminated blood. More recently, a four-year national programme to vaccinate schoolchildren against hepatitis B was halted in 1998 amid panic that it was responsible for hundreds of cases of multiple sclerosis. No link was established, although the vaccine is blamed for a variety of illnesses and several dozen adult victims have been awarded compensation.

So, I reasoned, they're going to be extra careful. And not even the most virulent anti-vaccination groups in France, those that fought in the courts to have the hepatitis B jab withdrawn, have anything to say about MMR.

Chantal Le Henin looked it up in the medicines guidebook. Inadvisable in the event of an allergy to eggs, she read. Possible side-effects: a slight reddening of the skin and temperature of 39-40 deg, very exceptionally convulsions. Manufactured by Pasteur and Merieux, two leading French laboratories.

'This is simply not a debate in France, nor in Belgium, Switzerland or anywhere else I know of,' said Le Henin. 'Maybe in Britain it's to do with the vaccine you use. I don't know.'

She gave me the prescription. And Nathan is scheduled to have the jab on Wednesday.