More parents opting to not vaccinate their children
Measles cases are spreading across the Western states.
More than 80 cases have been found in a dozen states. It’s even causing some concern about crowds at this weekend’s Super Bowl in Phoenix.
“If you’ve been vaccinated against measles and are exposed to it, your chance of getting it is one percent,” said Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News Chief Health and Medical editor. “If you haven’t (been vaccinated), it is 90 percent. The vaccine really, really works.”
Doctors are worried that a woman who contracted the disease may have exposed nearly 200 children to the virus in the Phoenix area. One thousand adults are being monitored. Experts believe the outbreak started when an unvaccinated family was infected at Disneyland.
Half of the residents afflicted with measles were not vaccinated. ABC-7 looked into how many children in the El Paso/Las Cruces area opted not to get vaccinations.
Many are now pointing to parents who choose not to vaccinate their children. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services and the New Mexico Department of Health, those numbers are on the rise.
For the 2012-13 school year in El Paso County, the parents of 266 children filed for vaccination exemptions. That number jumped to 308 for the 2013-14 school year, part of more than 38,000 in the state of Texas to opt against vaccinations, up 6,000 over the previous year.
In Dona Ana County, the parents of 141 children filed for vaccination exemptions, part of more than 3,000 in the state of New Mexico to do so. According to the Associated Press, that number is up more than 500 over just a couple of years ago.
ABC-7 spoke with Dr. Bradley Fuhrman, physician-in-chief at El Paso Children’s hospital and department chair of pediatrics at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center of El Paso. He said many more parents are opting for vaccination exemptions, not so much because of philosophical or religious beliefs, but because of a concern about side effects.
“Sometimes kids get some redness of their arm or they get a little bit of a fever,” Dr. Fuhrman said. “But that’s really the bulk of what their reactions are like, and when you contrast that to the severity of the illnesses that the vaccines prevent, it’s a very, very strong argument to have the vaccinations.”
Dr. Fuhrman added that measles causes bad encephalitis and pneumonia and it can kill a child or cause devastating brain disease. He said getting vaccinated is not only in a child’s best interest, but in the best interest of other children in the community.
