MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) WVU Medicine Childrens and a number of medical experts have come out against legislation that would loosen vaccination requirements for entry into schools and daycares in West Virginia.
State law requires children entering schools or daycares to provide proof of vaccination against chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and pertussis, also known as whooping cough.
The state is one of six in the nation that allow only medical exemptions from the school immunization requirements.
Senate Bill 535, introduced Feb. 1, would change that by allowing religious and philosophical exemptions to the immunization requirements, with simply a letter from the childs parents needed.
Sen. Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio, told WSAZ that the bills aim is to ensure equal access to education for all children in the state, preventing people from moving out of state or homeschooling children who would otherwise attend school in West Virginia.
Many in the health care community have spoken out against the bill, however, saying it puts children unnecessarily at risk from preventable diseases that can cause serious and long-term health complications and even death.
WVU Medicine Childrens Hospital stands against Senate Bill 535, which attempts to allow non-medical exemptions for daycare and school vaccine administration, said Dr. Jeffrey Lancaster, pediatric hospitalist and associate chief medical officer at WVU Medicine Childrens.
We trust our elected officials to represent the needs and wants of West Virginians, and I hope that they really consider the negative health consequences for children if this bill passes, Lancaster said.
While the focus has been on SB 535, other bills currently in the legislature would also loosen the immunization requirements. These proposals include allowing private schools to choose whether or not to require immunizations, allowing medical exemptions at the request of any licensed physician without approval from the commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health, and leaving the decision entirely up to the discretion of parents.
Lancaster said the efficacy of West Virginias strong immunization requirements have helped keep the states children healthy, however.
In 2019, 31 states reported measles outbreaks, the most since 1994. Last year, Ohio had more than 80 confirmed cases of measles in unvaccinated children, including 36 who developed severe disease and had to be hospitalized. West Virginia, despite its long border with Ohio, had zero cases, Lancaster said.
Thats a testament to the efficacy of the vaccines, and also to the safety, he said.
Lancaster said that while COVID-19 vaccinations approved for emergency use in recent years have been understandably polarizing, the vaccines required for school are not new, and their effects have been thoroughly reviewed and studied.
There are stacks and stacks of research that attest to the safety and efficacy of the required school vaccines, and there are also stacks and stacks of evidence of the illnesses and sometimes deaths that these preventable diseases can cause, he said.
Rumors and reports of a link between vaccines and autism have also been researched and found to be unsubstantiated.
Autism can have very heartbreaking consequences for the development of a child. Were getting better at recognizing it, number one, and better at treating it, number two. With that concern, there has been repeated study after study trying to find ties between autism in vaccinated kids versus autism in unvaccinated kids, and there has not been any link shown. Its just more evidence that these vaccines are safe medically, theyre safe neurologically and theyre safe developmentally.
Based on his own experiences with patients and families, Lancaster said he does not believe a majority of West Virginians are in favor of a change to the existing vaccination requirements.
I am worried that this bill and this change in law is not with the approval of most West Virginians, and Im afraid this is happening under the nose of a lot of West Virginians. In our experience, the vast majority of parents of kids want to have their kids protected with these vaccines, and particularly the parents who want their kids to have protection with vaccination but those kids cant due to some medical illness are very appreciative of the fact that other kids are immunized, creating this herd immunity, which protects their children, Lancaster said.
Lancaster is not the only medical provider to speak out against the legislation.
In an op-ed, three pediatric physicians affiliated with the WVU School of Medicine said any non-medical exemptions would place our children, residents and communities at an unnecessary public health risk for dangerous, yet preventable, diseases and illnesses.
Harrison County Health Officer Dr. Nancy Joseph also recently spoke out against legislation targeting the immunization requirements at a meeting of the countys Board of Health.
Other states look at our state when they look at immunization rates and infectious disease in children. They use us to say, Look how great that is, she said. ... We have a whole generation of physicians that have ... never seen measles, that have never seen, sometimes, chickenpox. But theres a reason for that, and we dont want them to get that experience again.
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