The number of Michigan parents refusing to let kids get disease-prevention vaccines is on the rise, new data confirms.
This state has the country’s fourth-highest rate of parents getting religious or philosophical waivers for mandatory vaccines against diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, mumps and other diseases, David Eggert of the Associated Press reports, citing a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 7,300, or 5.5 percent, of the state’s roughly 125,000 kindergartners had medical, religious or philosophical waivers on file last school year. That’s up from about 6,900 the year before and 5,700 in 2010-11.
Three in four of the exemptions were for philosophical reasons. Parents may be skeptical that vaccines are essential, fear they carry their own risk or believe in older vaccines but question newer shots. Others may take pause at the sheer number of shots and wonder if the cumulative effect has been studied enough. . . .
Less than 72 percent of young children and 63 percent of Michigan adolescents are fully immunized, according to the Michigan State Medical Society.
The wire service reporter quotes Bob Swanson, director of the Division of Immunizations at the Department of Community Health:
"We need to really voice the importance of making sure kids are vaccinated and that only legitimate waivers are being utilized.”
In additions to the conditions named above, childhood vaccines also protect against tetanus, polio, rubella, hepatitis B, chickenpox and meningitis.
By the time most children are 6, they will have been stuck with a needle about two dozen times.
