School officials went door-to-door to search for unvaccinated children.
1. Natomas school officials go door to door to find unvaccinated students
Natomas, CA. A recent law has mandated whooping cough shots for children in grade 7 through 12. The law allows 30 days for students to either get vaccinated or file exemption forms before the start of the school year. Since the school year has begun, thousands of students still remain un-vaccinated. In an aggressive move, school officials have now begun going door to door in an attempt to vaccinate any school age children remaining un-vaccinated.
It should be noted, while many of the un-vaccinated children are independently schooled (home-schooled,) parents refusing vaccines -often because of personal beliefs, have been painted as “negligent” and their children as “truant.”
2. Bachmann questions safety of HPV vaccine for girls
Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann recently went on record questioning the safety of the HPV vaccine. In a recent interview on the “Today” show, she states the vaccine: “potentially could be a very dangerous drug.”
She then went on to detail a Mother’s account of her daughter’s serious injury following the HPV vaccine:
“I will tell you that I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Fla., after the debate and tell me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter,”
Bachmann continued:
“It can have very dangerous side effects. The mother was crying when she came up to me last night. I didn’t know who she was before the debate. This is a very real concern, and people have to draw their own conclusion,” she said.
3. Thousands in Calif. started school without vaccines
Sacramento, CA. Record breaking numbers of parents used personal belief exemptions from vaccines in the 2010 school-year. Roughly 2.5% of California’s 470,000 kindergartners have been exempted from vaccination, marking the state’s highest rate of refused vaccines since 1978. In the affluent north coastal region of California, rates are more than double that.
It has been observed that exemption rates have steadily increased since 2004. Some feel this could be because of information that is readily available via the internet.
There are two types of exemptions available, the medical exemption or the personal belief exemption. While the medical exemption requires a Doctor signature, the personal belief exemption allows parents to refuse vaccines without having to provide various reasons for doing so.
Barbara Lowe Fisher, President and co-founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) located in Vienna, VA., said sometimes parents file the personal belief exemption because they are unable to find a doctor who will sign a medical exemption form.
“We’ve had families whose children have had reactions to vaccines, and some of them have become injured or even died. They want to make an independent, informed decision for their other children, and they can’t even find doctors who will write medical exemptions,” she said.
She said NVIC’s mission is to prevent vaccine-related injury or death, and defends a parent’s right to opt of a vaccine.
4. Effectiveness of whooping cough vaccine in doubt
Atlanta, GA. It has recently been discovered that the effectiveness of the whooping cough vaccine wears off after just three years. Many doctors are puzzled because this is much sooner than what they believed.
A study seems to suggest this could be the reason for recent outbreaks occurring around the US in children who were fully vaccinated.
Lead researcher, Dr. David Witt said, “I was disturbed to find maybe we had a little more confidence in the vaccine than it might deserve.”
Witt went on to say that he expected to see high numbers of illness in unvaccinated people. He was shocked to discover 80% of the children who developed whooping cough were fully vaccinated.
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Science/1264748.html
5. Mom outraged Son Given Wrong Vaccine
Calgary, Canada. A mom is outraged that her son mistakenly received a double dose of vaccine.
Four-year-old Cameron has been suffering from a cold and fever since receiving the wrong shot at a local health center. Cameron was due to receive a second dose of MMR and the pneumococcal vaccine, but his Mother prefers to space them out, believing he would only receive a pneumococcal shot.
Instead, Cameron was administered DTaP-IPV, a shot that he’d already received three months prior.
Kyla Martin, mother to four year old Cameron, said she was upset and in tears after the nurse exclaimed she had given the boy the wrong vaccine. The situation has now led her to question the safeguards in place that are supposed to prevent these sort of mishaps.
Medical experts are now reviewing the case.
http://www.lfpress.com/news/canada/2011/09/20/18715606.html
Photo Credit: PeaPodSquadMom