United States: The state official report suggests that as children are returning to school, school nurses across Pennsylvania are trying to make sure that the students are vaccinated.
Vaccine exemption demand on the rise
The record-keeping requirement is simple and serves the positive purpose of ensuring that school officials protect children from diseases such as tetanus and hepatitis B.
However, demand for exemptions from vaccination has turned this work into something negative, and Staff have been able to glimpse the kind of fears some parents have for their children.
According to state law, parents can refuse immunization for reasons of philosophy or religion, but the children can go to school. However, their kids could be excluded from attending schools during a vaccine-preventable disease prevalence, altoonamirror.com reported.
Concerns of health officials
The officials revealed that the constant rise of exemptions is worrisome in Pennsylvania and other states in the US. Vaccination of childhood illnesses has reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic due to disruptions in accessibility to healthcare facilities along with increased vaccine doubts.
One of the most dangerous communicable diseases that are gradually returning due to those changes is measles.
Measles can lead to an earache, fever, diarrhea, pneumonia, and swelling of the brain that results in deafness and, at times, leads to the development of intellectual disability.
According to the CDC, as of August 15/2024, the US has 219 confirmed cases. Children below five years are affected by these diseases by 40 percent, and over half of them require hospitalization.
As per the experts, no childhood diseases, including measles and polio, can resurface if vaccinations are taken by almost everybody, while in Pennsylvania, this is not the case, altoonamirror.com reported.
In school for the 2019-20 academic year, the average immunization rate of pupils in the first year for measles was 96.4 percent as per a survey conducted by the state Department of Health.
However, in 2022-23, a drop has been registered, where the dropout rate was marked at 94 percent. As the number of un-vaccinated kids increases and climbs higher, Pennsylvania could well be facing a public health disaster in the making, one which could have been prevented with ease.