Camden and Islington Health Authority have warned that failure to have children immunized with the MMR jab has led to a 700% increase in measles in the two boroughs this year.

Many parents are now refusing to allow their children to have the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination because of fears that it may be linked to autism. Up to 40% of children in the boroughs are now unprotected from the diseases which can be fatal in some cases.

Doctors now fear that there could be a measles epidemic and the health authority is to write to every parent whose children are not immunized to warn them of the potential dangers. In 2001 only 73.5 % of two-year-old children were immunized while the health authority's target is 95%.

Dr Andrew Wakefield, former consultant gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital, in Pond Street, Hampstead, has been blamed for the increasingly low uptake of MMR. He published the results of research which seemed to indicate a link between the vaccine and the onset of autism in some children. But other doctors have rejected his findings and have insisted that not being immunised is the worst risk that children face.

An inquest into the death last October of Regent's Park Zoo elephant handler Jim Robson was told last week that the keeper should not have been in the elephants' compound alone.

Mr Robson of Fleet Road, Hampstead was killed when Mya, a 3.8 tonne Asian elephant that he had known for thirteen years wrapped her trunk around his legs and stamped on his head.

Lee Sambrook, who now looks after Mya at Whipsnade Zoo said that he believed there should always have been two keepers in the elephants' enclosure. London Zoo manager Bill James denied that safety had been overlooked at the zoo. An investigation of the incident by health and safety officers from Westminster Council continues.

After the tragedy, all three of the London Zoo elephants were transferred to Whipsnade in Bedforshire. At the time, London Zoo denied that it was because of Mr Robson's death and said the move was made to give the animals better living conditions.

Mr Robson' skull was fractured and he died at Hampstead's Royal Free Hospital. Coroner Dr Paul Knapman recorded a verdict of accidental death.

A Camden woman has appeared at the Old Bailey charged with killing her two year-old daughter. Louise O'Shaughnessy, 39, who lives in Camden Town's Maiden Lane Estate, appeared in court last week to face charges of manslaughter, administering poison and child cruelty.

O'Shaughnessy's daughter Jasmine died after swallowing methadone, which is prescribed to heroin addicts, last April. The child would have been three only a few weeks after she died.

Evidence is said to suggest that the child may have been exposed to methadone for up to a year before her death.