Vaccinations face risky resistance Posted on August 27th
Parental suspicion is now so high that public health officials fear it could undermine one of the most important advances in medical history. Although vaccination rates have remained fairly steady, pockets of vaccine rejection can lead to outbreaks of childhood diseases that were once thought conquered.
Last week, federal officials reported that measles cases in the U.S. have reached their highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of the cases involving children of parents who opted against vaccination.
In Illinois the number of schoolchildren not getting shots for religious reasons is small but rising. During the 2007-08 academic year, almost 7,000 students got religious exemptions to avoid the measles shot, compared with about 3,000 in 1998-99. Those figures do not include home-schooled children, who sometimes go unvaccinated.
Doctors say worried parents tend to find scientific data less persuasive than the horror stories they hear about vaccine side effects online or from friends. One expert said attitudes are likely to change eventually, but only after children start dying again of diseases parents have come to think of as obsolete.
“I think people have a hard time separating out what’s reliable information and what’s not reliable,” Dr. Ruben Rucoba, a Wheaton pediatrician. “What gets attention is not the statistics, but the story. All it takes is one friend of a cousin of a neighbor who they can point to who says, ‘My child got an immunization, and now he has a problem.’ “
Rucoba and other pediatricians say they are frustrated and worried about how to reassure parents.
“The number of people who are trying to make changes in the vaccination schedule based on what they have heard or seen or read on the Internet is climbing every year,” Rucoba said. “Even those who ultimately decide not to alter the schedule have questions about it, and every year we spend more time talking about immunizations with parents.”
In the next few weeks the Illinois chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics will launch a survey to ask pediatricians how much time they spend answering parents’ questions, how it affects their medical practice and whether they are asking parents who refuse shots to leave their practices.
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