Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Return to U.S.- Parents Stop Vaccinating Kids
- From: "Too_Many_Tools" <too_many_tools@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 2 Aug 2006 18:41:39 -0700
Once Nearly Eradicated, Vaccine-Preventable Diseases Return to U.S.
Some Parents Have Stopped Vaccinating Their Kids, Putting Others at
Risk
By FELICIA D. STOLER
ABC News Medical Unit
Aug. 2, 2006 - - It started as a self-sacrificing trip to Romania to
perform missionary work at an orphanage.
But when a rural Indiana family returned home in 2005, the voyage ended
in a horrible twist: Thirty-four people in the West Lafayette area came
down with measles, a highly infectious disease brought home from
Romania by the family's teenage daughter, who hadn't been vaccinated
against it.
Although she wasn't feeling well, the girl attended a church function,
where several unvaccinated members of the community became exposed to
her germs. (Her family has asked that its name be withheld for privacy
reasons.)
The family's story highlights a growing concern, according to a report
published in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Although vaccines are designed to protect those most vulnerable to
infections -- children -- an increasing fear of vaccines could make
more towns ripe for the spread of measles and other vaccine-preventable
diseases, such as mumps and whooping cough, also known as pertussis.
Why do some people choose not to vaccinate their kids? In 1998, the
Lancet, a British medical journal, published an article that claimed
that the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine caused autism in children.
The article has since been retracted, but the worry has remained.
As a result, even though vaccines are required for school attendance,
many parents have opted out, claiming that vaccination violates their
personal or religious beliefs. It appears this view is especially
prevalent among parents who home-school their children. And this, in
turn, puts children and their communities at a growing risk of
spreading preventable epidemics.
"Most parents today have never seen the physical and emotional
devastation caused by vaccine-preventable diseases and have a skewed
view of the perceived risks associated with vaccines versus the actual
risks of the diseases the vaccines are designed to prevent," said Dr.
Gary L. Freed, chairman of the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee
and director of the Pediatrics and Child Health Evaluation and Research
unit at the University of Michigan Healthcare System.
Impact on the Community
In the Indiana measles outbreak, 71 percent of the children who
contracted measles were home-schooled. Experts agree that anecdotal
evidence suggests that families who home-school tend to have
nontraditional health care beliefs and are less interested in
conventional medicine.
The outbreak could have been worse. The majority of residents in this
community had been immunized against measles, so an epidemic was
prevented. Also, the New England Journal report noted that swift action
among local, state and federal agencies helped contain the disease.
The decision not to vaccinate affects not only the individual family
but puts everyone in a community at risk for contracting a disease,
doctors said.
Even if vaccinated, if a person has an immune system-suppressed
condition -- like cancer, HIV or organ transplantation -- he or she is
at risk of catching an infectious disease that is potentially deadly.
Pastor Del Broersma of the Upper Room Christian Fellowship in West
Lafayette, said the outbreak had a tremendous impact on the Indiana
community.
People who had small children who had not been immunized were asked to
not come to church. Sunday school and the meal after services were
suspended for three weeks.
"We asked those families who had the measles to honor a self-imposed
quarantine at the suggestion of the health department," he said.
After the outbreak, many families decided to immunize their children,
while other families remained unconvinced about the low risk of autism,
Broersma said, noting it was not church policy to withhold
immunizations.
The only adult in the community to contract measles, Scott Schneider,
46, didn't know he hadn't been vaccinated.
"They don't call these childhood diseases for nothing. It'll take your
life," he said. "I was totally out of commission for three months."
Only One Truly Eradicated Disease
Vaccines have dramatically improved the health of the world, but only
smallpox has been eradicated -- measles, polio, mumps and rubella still
pop up from time to time, said Dr. Samuel L. Katz, chairman emeritus of
pediatrics at Duke University and one of the inventors of the measles
vaccine.
In the United States, many doctors have never had the opportunity to
see some of these diseases firsthand, which means it can take longer to
diagnose them properly.
That doctors are unfamiliar with diagnosing vaccine-preventable
diseases is a "testament to the success of vaccinations," said Dr.
Lance Rodewald, director of immunization services at the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Still, in the rest of the world, diseases like measles are widespread.
There were an estimated 530,000 deaths in 2003 from measles, and it
remains the leading cause of vaccine-preventable death among children
worldwide, according to the CDC.
A Growing Problem
The Indiana case shows how easily a disease can be brought into the
United States.
"This issue is very real and can come to your community as easily as
imported cheese," said Dr. Jeff Durchin, chief of communicable disease
control for the Seattle Public Health Department.
For example, in 2004, Liz Parker and Norvin Leach adopted a baby girl
from China. They had no idea that a measles outbreak was rampant in the
orphanage.
But two days after coming home to Seattle, their daughter had a 105.5
degree fever. At first, the doctors at the hospital thought it was
SARS, since none of them had ever seen measles before, and the girl had
a rash that didn't look like measles. It took 10 days to correctly
diagnose her.
The couple had traveled with 11 other families, and when they all
returned stateside, measles had spread to Washington, Maryland,
Florida, New York and Alaska. One college student in Washington
contracted the measles from exposure to one of the children on an
airplane.
"The measles was not an isolated incident for our daughter," Parker
said. "It will always be part of her medical history and looming over
her head, as there can be potential complications that will be with her
for the rest of her life."
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