West Virginia’s School Immunization Requirements: Protecting Our Students & Communities
West Virginia’s policies pertaining to immunization requirements have been highly effective at increasing immunization rates, subsequently preventing outbreaks of infectious diseases in our schools and communities. Thus, WV’s immunization requirements should be preserved as is, without the addition of nonmedical (personal belief) exemptions or the removal of the medical exemption review process, to continue to protect the health of our families, students, communities, and state.
West Virginia’s Public Health Success
Vaccination is considered one of the greatest public health achievements of our time. An analysis of the routine U.S. childhood immunization schedule showed that childhood immunization among members of the 2009 US birth cohort prevents about 42,000 premature deaths and 20 million cases of disease, with net savings of $13.5 billion in direct costs and $68.8 billion in total societal costs. According to an extensive cost-benefit analysis by the CDC, every dollar spent on vaccination ultimately saves at least ten dollars.
For many health indicators West Virginia ranks among the worst in the nation. However, West Virginia’s school immunization requirements ensure that young children are up-to-date on their vaccines once they enter school. Overall, vaccination rates at kindergarten entry in West Virginia reach about 92-98% each year, depending on vaccine type – some of the highest rates in the nation. This brings West Virginia’s kindergarten immunization rates up to community (herd) immunity thresholds, preventing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. As a result, West Virginia has low incidence rates of many vaccine-preventable diseases.
In fact, because of West Virginia’s high vaccination rates among school age children, our state has not had an outbreak since 1994, when an outbreak of measles in Marshall County also spread into neighboring Ohio County, primarily among high school students. One person suffered serious complications during that outbreak and was hospitalized with encephalitis but, thankfully, fully recovered and suffered no long-term cognitive or other health effects. The last case of measles in West Virginia was in 2009.
Although measles was declared eliminated (no longer endemic) in the U.S. in 2000, when vaccination rates decline outbreaks of this highly contagious disease can occur quite quickly. Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, 9 out of 10 people around him or her will also become infected if they are not protected. A person can contract measles just by being in a room where a person with measles has been, even up to two hours after that person has left the room. It can cause serious health problems: about 1 in 4 people in the U.S. who get measles will be hospitalized; one out of every 1,000 people with measles will develop brain swelling, which could lead to brain damage; and one or two out of 1,000 people with measles will die. It is most dangerous in children under five years of age. Unfortunately, measles is not only dangerous and deadly, it is also very expensive to contain, at a cost of about $142,452 per case to the public health infrastructure.
Protecting Our Communities from Preventable Diseases
History has shown us that when immunization rates are high and vaccine-preventable diseases are no longer common, people begin to forget about the dangers of these diseases and some start to question the necessity of vaccination. When this occurs, immunization rates drop, jeopardizing our hard-earned community immunity and allowing diseases that were once prevented to return. Recent outbreaks of diseases, such as measles and pertussis (whooping cough), in other states are primarily due to decreases in immunization rates resulting in pockets of unimmunized individuals. Immunization rates must stay high to maintain community immunity and prevent vaccine-preventable diseases.
One major factor that has resulted in the reduction of immunization rates in other states are nonmedical (personal belief) exemptions to school immunization requirements. Some states allow personal belief exemptions so that parents can opt out of vaccinating their children due to their personal beliefs. Others use these exemptions as a convenience – when it takes less time and effort to obtain an exemption than to get their child vaccinated.
There are individuals who cannot be vaccinated due to an underlying medical condition, such as an allergy to a vaccine component or an immune deficiency, as can occur when a child is being treated for cancer or suffers from an immune system disorder. For this reason, medical exemptions to school vaccination requirements are permitted in West Virginia. But, to keep these unvaccinated children protected from vaccine-preventable diseases, immunization rates must remain high.
Nonmedical exemptions – under any name: personal belief, conscientious objection, religious, philosophical, etc. – are vaccine refusal. They make requirements optional; result in a decrease in vaccination rates, particularly when the nonmedical exemptions are easier to obtain than a vaccination; and drive up health care and public health costs to contain an outbreak. To allow nonmedical exemptions to vaccination requirements would expose our students, workers and residents to dangerous, yet preventable, diseases.
For more information, contact the West Virginia Immunization Network
