assignement 3 vaccination

Assignment 3: Research Problem

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Non-Vaccinated Children Should Not be allowed to School

Introduction

Vaccination is one of the main activities that most parents are keen on after a child is born. Caring parents complies with the governmental vaccination requirements to ensure that there increase the chances of their children survival in the world full of health issues. While some parents go out of their way to even provide their children with vaccine that are not mandatory based on the law, some parents completely refuse to give their children even the basic vaccines. This is attributed to their religious and traditional beliefs, and scientific philosophies among other reasons. Although their reasons may be justified, the fact remains that their act subjects their children into great danger of acquiring untreatable communicable diseases. It also put all other children at risk of the same (Wang et al., 2014). While implementing their beliefs and philosophies these parents fail in their main parenting duty of protecting their children and ensuring their survival in the best level possible. The danger would be even high of those children are to be exposed to public places where vaccinated diseases can easily be spread. In this regard, this paper proposes that non vaccinated children should not be allowed to public school. When parents opt not to vaccinate their children, they should then take the responsibility of using other possible means to protect them from the dangers that vaccines do. Therefore they should not be allowed to mingle with other children, especially in schools.

Background Information

Childhood vaccinations are among the most important public health intercessions of all time. They lower the danger of contracting risky childhood diseases that can be prevented through a vaccine. By 1999 all the 50 states of America ordered that parents should vaccinate their children over the most dangerous diseases which include polio, rubella and measles before their enrollment in public school. Parents therefore required to give the immunization documentation for day care and school admission (Ciolli, 2009). This highly compelled parents to vaccinate their children. However, all states permit medical exemption for those kids unable to obtain the vaccines due to reasons of medically contraindication. In addition, all states except two also except children vaccination based on non-medical reasons which include parents’ personal, and philosophical beliefs. This is said to subject all children at risk of contracting these preventable communicable diseases.

Vaccine saves about 6 to 9 million children’s lives globally every year. Vaccinations in the United State has reduced childhood vaccine-preventable diseases by over 95%This has resulted to increase in frequent cases of preventable epidemics claiming life of children. The formation of mandatory provision of vaccination proof for school admission was meant to increase public health. However there has been increase in nonmedical exception policies across the US. This has contributed to the recent increased rate of outbreaks of diseases that are preventable through vaccination in the US. For instance in 2008, 131 measles cases were reported by CDC in the US, which over double the annual average recorded from 2000 to 2007. In 2010, California recorded 465 cases of pertussis outbreak which resulted to 10 deaths (Lee et al., 2013).

Problems

The first problem is the increase in nonmedical exemption for vaccination across the US. These exemptions make it possible for parents to admit their non-vaccinated children to schools due to their own ideologies. The number of parents with such ridiculous ideologies has been increasing, which means, increase in the number of unvaccinated children in public schools. This subjects a huge population of American children; both vaccinated and non-vaccinated to high risk of dying from vaccine preventable communicable disease. The exceptions put at risk the life of children whose parents do not share the same ideologies with parents of the children who are not vaccinated.

The second problem is the complexity of the vaccine preventable diseases. While those diseases can be prevented, most of them cannot be cured. They are likely to cause death for all children who are not prevented against them through vaccination. Moreover, children have weak immune system and thus, even the vaccinated children may be subjected to disease management stress in case they get to acquire these diseases from those children who are not vaccinated as per their parent’s choice. It is highly unethical to subject children of parents who went out of their way to protect their own, just to adhere to others ideology. It is even worse to compromise public health by allowing such children to mingle with others in public schools.

The third problem is increasing cases and frequency of vaccine preventable diseases outbreaks. The leniency employed in the implementation of vaccination rule for school admission has subjected all children in the society into the danger of acquiring these diseases. The outbreaks have become more frequent and they are affecting more children than before. Though they may not kill the immunized children, they make then weak and unable to study as required as most of them get admitted in hospitals for days. They get to experience and suffer the diseases symptoms, mostly acquired from non-vaccinated kids.

Conclusion

There has been an increase in the nonmedical vaccination exemption policies in the US. This has weakened the law requiring all children admitted to the public school immunized. Consequently, the cases of vaccine preventable diseases outbreaks have been increasing with time. The public mingling of non-vaccinated children with vaccinated children in public school has subjected even those vaccinated into the danger of acquiring these diseases. Although it is important to respect people’s ideologies with regard to this issue, it is not right to subject the life of the children whose parents find vaccination important into danger. Thus, a solution is needed to either eliminate the cases of non-vaccinated children, or their mingling with others in public places, especially schools, to enhance public health. This research focus on identifying the best solution to the identified problems.

References

Ciolli, A. (2009). Religious and philosophical exemptions to mandatory school vaccinations: Who should bear the costs to society. Missouri Law Review, 74(2), 1-14.

Lee, E. O., Rosenthal, L., & Scheffler, G. (2013). The effect of childhood vaccine exemptions on disease outbreaks. Center for American Progress. Retrieved from < https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/VaccinesBrief-1.pdf>

Wang, E., Clymer, J., Davis-Hayes, C., & Buttenheim, A. (2014). Nonmedical exemptions from school immunization requirements: A systematic review. American Journal of Public Health, 104(11), e62-e84.