![]() It's not OK.Abstract: Vaccines are among the most effective prevention tools available to clinicians. "He will never see, walk or speak again and probably won't live past five. ![]() "He came in with pneumococcal meningitis," and then suffered a devastating brain herniation, Offit said. But his parents chose not to vaccinate and the staff didn't push it, Offit says. He'd been seen at the hospital's outpatient clinic at two, four, six and 12 months - all the times when kids get the pneumococcal vaccine. ![]() Not long ago, a one-and-a-half-year-old boy was admitted to Offit's hospital. The alternative is to sit back and let parents make bad decisions. "We're open-minded in the U.S.," Offit says, "even to the point where we let parents hurt their children."īut increasingly, pediatricians, including Offit's wife, Bonnie, refuse to help parents do that. But as a veteran of the 1991 Philadelphia measles epidemic that infected 1,400 and killed nine children who weren't immunized, Offit cautions that playing the odds is a dangerous game.īut creating rules that make that game safer is challenging in a society that cherishes individual rights. And compared to the pre-vaccine days, he says, when every year millions of children got sick, 48,000 were hospitalized and 500 died, that's true. Some parents think measles isn't such a big risk, Offit says. "But parents of kids with all sorts of illnesses like to give them an opportunity to have fun like other kids. "I don't know how many Make-a-Wish Foundation kids were (at Disneyland)," Omer said in reference to the foundation that grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses. (In the Disneyland measles outbreak, at least four of the cases had been vaccinated.)Ĭhildren on chemo or who have other genuine medical reasons for exemption are particularly vulnerable when they interact with unvaccinated people, whether at school or places like Disneyland. That's because no vaccine is 100 percent effective, so even a vaccinated child could get sick if exposed. The main problem with this clustering behavior, says Omer, is that every child's risk for disease depends on what others do. Last year, when a record number of California parents claimed personal belief exemptions, health officials reported the most measles cases seen here since 1995 and the most whooping cough cases since 1947. When enough people stop vaccinating, he says, measles and whooping cough, among the most contagious diseases, rapidly exploit holes in community, or herd, immunity. Paul Offit, who directs the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and was not associated with the study. "Not surprisingly, areas that are under-immunized directly correlate with those areas at greatest risk of infections when they occur," says Dr. That's why states require children to be fully vaccinated before entering kindergarten. ![]() The Disneyland measles outbreak is a stark reminder that pathogens can gain a foothold where vulnerable people congregate. "These kinds of clusters can be associated with later epidemics." When Lieu's group analyzed vaccination against specific diseases, they found that under-vaccination rates for the MMR vaccine – which protects against measles, mumps and rubella – were 1.69 times higher for children living in Marin and Sonoma counties compared with other areas. In nearly every case, vaccine-refusal clusters overlapped with large areas of under-immunization. Researchers then matched these children's vaccination records to their addresses, to see if these children were clustered geographically.Īcross the 13 counties analyzed, the proportion of children who'd missed one or more shots increased from an average of 8 percent at the beginning of the study period to 12.4 percent at the end.Īltogether, nearly 9,000 young children lived in these clusters. They were looking both for children who had received no vaccines and for children who had been "under-immunized," meaning they had missed one or more shots by age three. To look for at-risk communities, Lieu and her colleagues analyzed the medical records of 155,000 children in Kaiser's system who lived in 13 Northern California counties and were born between 20. Her team hoped to spot clusters of refusals earlier, when recommended vaccines are due, so they could take steps to ward off outbreaks. Tracy Lieu, director of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research, who led the study. But those parents probably refused vaccines some years ago, says Dr. The researchers knew that places like Marin and Sonoma counties had higher rates of personal belief exemptions. Shots - Health News Measles Makes An Unwelcome Visit To Disneyland ![]()
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