Vaccinations for children have become a polarizing issue in the U.S. in the past few years. This is evident in the rise of exemptions due to philosophical or religious reasons. But with the recent measles outbreak reported to have began at California’s Disneyland in December 2014, there has been a debate on whether to make vaccinations for children mandatory due to health concerns or let parents be free to choose.
But whatever the arguments may be, many state health officials encourage people to get vaccinated.
“It’s very worrying that measles could be re-established in the U.S.,” says Dr. Jennifer Dillaha, medical director of immunization at the Arkansas Department of Health. “Measles was declared eradicated in 2000, [meaning] we didn’t have cases that started [in the U.S.]”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arkansas had an 86.5 percent MMR vaccination rate among children enrolled in kindergarten in the 2013-14 school year. The MMR vaccine protects against measles, mumps and rubella. The DTaP vaccination, which protects against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus, had an 83.3 percent vaccination rate among the kindergarten population that year.
According to the CDC, Arkansas kindergartners were also protected that year against chicken pox, which requires two doses, at 85.4 percent.
Pulaski County has 232 exemptions for kindergarten through 12th-grade students, which is a provisional number that could change, says Kerry Krell, public information officer with the Health Department. Children with exemptions are not necessarily free of vaccinations but may choose not to have some of them.
According to Health Department data, three Northwest Arkansas counties have the highest rate of exemptions. Benton County has the highest number of exemptions for K-12 students at 863, followed by Washington County with 585 and Sebastian County with 189. Krell says there’s just a greater number of people who have philosophical, religious or medical reasons for not wanting vaccinations in those counties.
Arkansas grants three types of exemptions: medical, religious and philosophical.
Medical reasons make up the smallest group of exemptions in Arkansas, according to data from the Health Department.
Religious and philosophical exemptions are granted on very similar grounds. One can be exempt if immunizations conflict with a religious or philosophical belief of the parent or guardian. Since philosophical exemptions were allowed, they grew to be the largest number of exemptions in the state, with 4,311 private and public kindergarten students having them f0r the 2014-15 school year. When the law was passed in 2003, there were less than 1,000 total exemptions for kindergartners in public and private schools in the state; for the 2014-15 school year, the number is more than 6,000, according to the Health Department.
Home-schooled children are not required to be immunized.
“I think one of the beliefs that is common is that immunizations are linked to autism,” Dillaha says.
The alleged link between autism and the MMR vaccine was based on a paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield published in British medical journal The Lancet on Feb. 28, 1998. Numerous studies were done investigating the link. The Lancet later printed a retraction of Wakefield’s paper.
Dillaha says more people should look into information on vaccinations.
“I think we do have more and more people who are concerned about the safety of the vaccine than the diseases themselves,” Dillaha says. “I would encourage people to check out snopes.com for information when they run across vaccine information.”
Contact Joseph via email (joseph@syncweekly.com) or tweet (@jpricebb)