Children of anti-vaxxers to be sent home today if shots not up to date


Oregon leads the nation with highest percentage of kindergarteners with non-medical vaccine exemptions.

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BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR

Unvaccinated children who have not received a waiver were not allowed to attend school, daycare or Head Start starting Wednesday.

The Register-Guard reports that Oregon has one of the highest rates of children avoiding vaccination for non-medical reasons.

This year, the state is making it more difficult to obtain such a waiver.

From the R-G story:

To decrease the number of parents who sought non-medical vaccine exemptions, Oregon now requires parents to consult their family doctor or other health professionals to qualify for a waiver of any of the vaccines against a dozen diseases. Previously, a doctor’s signature was required only for students who could not be vaccinated due to health reasons, such as allergies. The state also offers an online alternative of watching a one-hour video that lays out the scientific evidence on the risks and benefits of immunization.

“Immunization is an effective way to keep schools and the entire community healthy,” said Stacy de Assis Matthews, school law coordinator for the state’s Public Health Division. “We want to make sure children are fully protected against vaccine-preventable diseases such as whooping cough and measles.”

In Southern Oregon, public health nurses’ workday was packed with immunizing students before the deadline — the Medford Mail Tribune reported.

Jackson Baures, Jackson County Public Health Division manager, said he won’t know until the beginning of March how many students were excluded from facilities countywide. But since sending out the letters Feb. 4, public health nurses have reported an increase in the number of people seeking vaccines, he said. Public health nurses gave about 415 immunizations in the first two weeks of February, compared with 260 immunizations in the last two weeks of January.

“In the light of the measles outbreak, we are really hoping that parents choose to vaccinate instead of getting a nonmedical exemption,” he said.

With measles making a comeback due to parents avoiding vaccinating their children, hospitals are rethinking their policies regulating their response to cases.

Salem Health emailed primary-care providers Tuesday telling them to send patients to the emergency department only if they are experiencing complications, the Salem Statesman Journal reported.

Pneumonia, a lung infection, is the most common cause of death in young children with measles, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As many as one out of 20 children with measles gets pneumonia. Encephalitis is less common but also a severe complication that could leave the patient deaf or disabled, according to the CDC.

Salem Health spokeswoman Sherryll Hoar said the memo is a response to questions that area doctors have raised about how suspected measles cases should be handled. The hospital has seen one or two suspected cases, she said. The hospital warned that sending uncomplicated measles cases to the ED could unnecessarily expose vulnerable patients to the disease — and further bog down operations at a time the hospital is seeing a record number of patients.

The SJ also released an examination of where vaccination exemptions are most popular, finding varying results:

“We have known for quite a while that there are geographic areas where exemption rates are higher,” said Judy Cleave, program supervisor of immunization services for the Marion County Health Department, in an email. “Parents who chose non-medical exemptions are frequently well educated people who have very strong opinions about vaccines.”

The nonmedical exemption rate for Marion County in 2014 was 4.3 percent, Cleave said, placing the county at about mid-range in comparison to others.

Oregon state Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward sponsored a bill in the beginning of February to end exemptions to vaccinations. She argued that Oregon having the highest rate of unvaccinated children was threatening public health.

“They don’t know the damage they can cause,” she said in a Portland Business Journal story. “They don’t remember that mumps leaves people infertile and rubella causes birth defects and measles kills one in 1,000 people who get it. If we don’t do something now, we’ll have a large public health crisis on our hands.”