Sep 2, 2015 3 min read

If you read the PublicSource story we published the other day about immunization of schoolchildren in Pennsylvania – or, more accurately, the lack of proper immunization – and you’re not concerned, you really should be.

After analyzing data from the state Department of Health, PublicSource found some students may be going back to school this year in classrooms where perhaps 20 percent of their classmates do not have all of their state-required vaccinations for such illnesses as polio, measles, mumps, diphtheria and hepatitis.

The reasons are varied. There are those who are granted waivers for religious reasons, but the state also permits parents to send unvaccinated children to school because they have “a strong moral or ethical conviction similar to a religious belief.” We’re not sure what that is, exactly.

Then there are the parents who simply failed, for whatever reason, to see to it their children got all their shots. You might think those kids would be barred from entering our public schools until the problem was taken care of. You would be wrong. The state lets those kids into school “provisionally” and gives their parents eight months to get the children their immunizations. That’s simply ridiculous. PublicSource noted in Pittsburgh Public Schools, for example, a child could attend school until May 1 without getting their shots.

“That’s exactly the time period when you think about measles. …. They typically peak in the winter, in the first term,” Wilbert van Panhuis, an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, told PublicSource. “It’s counterproductive because, after eight months, the school year is almost over.”

There were a number of recent outbreaks of mumps and measles around the country, and according to the PublicSource report, Pennsylvania last year had one of the worst vaccination rates in the nation for those illnesses.

The news is not great close to home, either. According to state figures, the rate of immunizations for measles, mumps and rubella (German measles) in Greene County schools, which stood at about 96 percent in the 2007-08 school year, was down to 90 percent last year. All other immunization rates are declining there, as well. In Washington County schools, the rates are trending up, but the percentage of those protected against measles, mumps and rubella remains at about 90 percent.

The report from PublicSource noted measles is highly contagious, and experts believe 95 percent of the population needs to be protected to prevent it from spreading. Fifty of the state’s 67 counties failed to reach that mark even once in the past eight years.

Immediate steps are needed to address this public health threat.

First, the state regulation allowing students to attend classes for eight months before meeting the immunization requirements should be scrapped, and fortunately, state Health Secretary Karen Murphy indicated to PublicSource the provisional period could be eliminated as early as the 2016-17 school year.

There are cases in which children with certain legitimate medical conditions cannot receive some immunizations, and we have no problem with that. But we should not permit parents to use their religion or some nebulous personal beliefs to increase the risk that other people’s children might be infected with potentially deadly diseases. Unfortunately, we have more than a few people in our society these days who get their “medical” information from some bubble-headed Hollywood type or the crunchy-granola mom down the street.

It’s time for the vast majority of exemptions and accommodations to end, and for our children’s health to be taken more seriously.