From The Orange County Register
By Maria Minon Contributing Writer
This week, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that removes the religious and personal belief exemptions that previously allowed parents to send their children to school unvaccinated, putting other school children at risk for serious infectious illnesses. It is my hope that the enactment of this important legislation will protect the health and well-being of school-aged children in our State.
With this new law, California now leads the nation in the straightforward effort to protect children from preventable diseases, long-term illness and death. This decision has been celebrated throughout the state by those with a passion for the health of our children, but nowhere is it more deeply felt than in Orange County, home to the devastating measles outbreak that brought this matter to our state legislators’ attention.
More than 100 cases of measles in California and Mexico were traced to a single unvaccinated visitor at Disneyland. An analysis recently published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics shows that low vaccination rates caused the rapid spread of the highly contagious disease.
Vaccinations create a “herd immunity” effect – in which even unvaccinated people within a community can be protected from contagious diseases; but in order to establish herd immunity, at least 96 percent of the population must be vaccinated.
The vaccination rate among those who were exposed to the measles during the Orange County outbreak was no higher than 86 percent, and it may have been as low as 50 percent according to the study.
The sheer preventability of the outbreak alarmed legislators and child advocates, and it poked holes in every the argument that vaccine opponents offered. The bill passed with bipartisan majority support. Mississippi and West Virginia have similar laws, and it is expected that California’s bold action will inspire other states to protect their children as well.
For the first time, unfounded rumors about vaccine safety unraveled decades of progress, evidence-based medicine has won. And more importantly, children have won. In Third World countries, 1.5 million children each year die due to lack of vaccines. Here, vaccines save 3 to 4 million lives a year. But immunizations can only save lives if children are immunized.
In Orange County, only 90 percent of kindergartners started the past school year up-to-date on their vaccinations. Children in more affluent areas of Orange County had even lower vaccination rates, with some that dipped into the low 70s.
With this new law, that will change. The law sensibly still allows for medical exemptions for children with medical conditions such as cancer, whose compromised immune systems cannot tolerate vaccines. The impact of this legislation is that now that fewer parents can opt out of vaccinating their children, those who need “herd immunity” will once again have it.
No parent likes to hear their children cry when they are getting vaccinated. But the goal of vaccination programs is to defeat preventable diseases, as we did with small pox. This goal is worth some discomfort in order to promote the greater good.
We must do everything we can to protect children from harmful and deadly disease. This week, with a single signature, California made a promise to do just that.
Dr. Maria Minon is vice president of medical affairs for Children’s Hospital of Orange County and she chairs the Children and Families Commission of Orange County.
