Vaccination rules falling well short
Until this year, Pennsylvania had ridiculously lax regulations regarding immunization of public school students, and although the state is headed in the right direction, one big problem remains.
On the positive side, upgraded state regulations require that students have a combination shot for diptheria and tetanus, a whooping cough vaccination, a combined immunization against measles, mumps and rubella (German measles), four doses of polio vaccine and two vaccinations against chicken pox, or proof of immunity from that disease. Also, students entering 12th grade now must have a booster shot for meningitis. They already had been required to have a first meningitis vaccination before starting seventh grade.
Of equal importance, under the revised rules that took effect this week, students and their parents will have just days, not months, to get their vaccination house in order, or the students will be refused entry to schools. As we noted in an editorial a couple of years ago, the old regulations allowed children without proper immunizations to be admitted to school “provisionally,” a process that allowed them, in some cases, to remain in classrooms without the required vaccinations until May 1, close to the end of the school year.
At that time, PublicSource reported that immunization rates were falling short across the commonwealth. In Greene County, the rate of measles, mumps and rubella immunizations for students had fallen to 90 percent in 2014, down from 96 percent in the 2007-08 school year, and in Washington County, the immunization rate was trending up, but the percentage was still just 90 percent. Experts noted measles is highly contagious, and a 95 percent immunization rate is considered necessary to prevent an outbreak. In 2014, 50 of the state’s 67 counties had failed to reach that benchmark even once in the previous eight years.
Unfortunately, efforts to boost immunization rates are running into resistance from people who are part of what has become known as the “anti-vaxxer” movement. The “father” of this recent parting with good sense was British doctor and researcher Andrew Wakefield, author of a 1998 paper that linked the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism. Of course, Wakefield’s research was quickly discredited as a total fraud, and he was banned from practicing medicine in the UK, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to peddle his snake oil, and for others – who would rather believe a minor celebrity like Jenny McCarthy over learned doctors and scientists – to continue to lap it up.
That brings us to the enduring problem with the state rules on immunizations: a loophole of Mack truck proportions.
According to a recent report in the Republican-Herald of Pottsville, the state Health Department’s website states, “A child may still obtain medical, religious or philosophical exemption from meeting the immunization requirements.”
That’s not acceptable. Certainly, there are some children who, because of legitimate medical issues, cannot receive certain vaccines. They – along with children still too young to be immunized, adults who are unvaccinated for medical reasons and the elderly whose immunity might have waned – are the very people who must be protected by having everyone else vaccinated to avoid disease outbreaks.
Simply put, no one’s “beliefs” should allow them to put other people’s children in peril. It’s time for our state lawmakers and/or the governor to take the next step, ignore cries of outrage from various fringes, and close this potentially deadly hole in the regulations.