Solution to Problem and Advantages

Solution to Problem and Advantages

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Solution to the Problem and Advantages

The establishment of mandatory school vaccinations law was basically to minimize the spread of vaccine controllable diseases among the school going children. This law was employed by all American states and they have played a great role in enhancing public health. In most case mandatory school vaccination only exempted a few based on medical conditions. However, different states have loosened the grip initially provided by this law, allowing exemption of many more people based on personal ideologies. This has resulted to increase in the number of unvaccinated kids in public school, owing to parents’ ideologies. The situation has resulted to increase in the frequency of occurrence of vaccine preventable diseases in various states in the country. It has also resulted to increase in the rate of spreading and number of affected individuals in the country in the recent past. This has subject both vaccinated and unvaccinated children attending public school to the danger of acquiring these diseases. The situation can result to increase in the rate of children mortality in a country, and medical cost among the population. This paper focuses on defining the best possible solution for the identified problem based on its advantage to the public health of the American population.

Possible Solution

The danger of the emergency and spread of vaccine preventable diseases is increased by increase in the number of unvaccinated children admission to public schools. This has highly been enhanced by introduction of exemption laws in different states based on ideologies. While people’s ideologies should be respected, their respect should not be at the cost of those who do not share their ideologies. A huge number of parents do respect the reasons behind the establishment of mandatory school vaccination law and they obey it to the fullest as a way of protecting their children. However, their effort is nullified when the government permits unvaccinated children to share schools and classes with those vaccinated in public school. To solve this problem, parents of the unvaccinated children should be made to be liable of their choices by being denied admission to public schools. The exemption law that regards people’s ideologies should thus be adjusted to clearly state that children will be exempted form mandatory vaccination but prevented from joining public schools. Children excepted based on parents’ ideologies should therefore be provide with private home schooling by their parents (Wang et al., 2014).

Parents who opt to vaccinate their children do so to protect their children from acquiring severe symptoms of vaccine preventable diseases or from dying from these diseases. Their choice of protecting their children through vaccine should be respected by the government which also believes in diseases control via vaccination. Thus, their children should not be predisposed to the danger that their parents tried to safeguard them from carelessly. Choice has consequences and thus, it would be very important for parents who chose their ideologies to experience any agony related to their choices alone, without endangering the rest members of the public. It is also important to protect the unvaccinated children by minimizing their exposure to the vaccine preventable diseases, as they have a higher risk of acquiring them. This is anticipated to work best for unvaccinated and vaccinated children, and thus for the health of the general public.

Advantages of the Selected Solution

The first main advantage of the proposed solution is the decline of the frequency and rate of vaccine preventable diseases eruption and spread, and also decline in the number of affected individuals. Unvaccinated children have a higher chance of acquiring vaccine preventable diseases. When affected child is schooling in public school, there is about 100% guarantee that the child will pass the disease to other unvaccinated children. There is also an average chance that the vaccinated children interacting with this child will experience light or severe symptoms of the disease. Thus, allowing unvaccinated children in schools increases the rate and frequency of the vaccine preventable diseases. This can only be controlled by minimizing the interaction of unvaccinated children from the rest of the public (Wang et al., 2014). These children should be prevented from mingling with other school going children who are at a higher risk of acquiring these diseases due to poor immunity. This will reduce the number of affected children in case there is an outbreak. It will also reduce the rate of anxiety and fear among parents with children in public school. Low rate of spreading and reduced number of affected children reduces the chances of learning interference, and cases of absenteeism and hence increasing the learning efficiency. In addition this reduces the distress created by the diseases symptoms and also the stress among classmates created by death of one of them or the death of more children in a school (Ciolli, 2008).

Denying unvaccinated children enrollment chance in public schools reduces the social and economic cost associated with high spread of vaccine preventable diseases. Prevention is regarded as the most economic method of managing contentious diseases. The cost of managing these diseases is considerably high due to high rate of spread and severe symptoms that makes the patient week and in need of intensive care. These diseases require expensive medical treatment and the chances of survival are slim. Some of these diseases such as polio leave the victims paralyzed and thus, changing the victims’ life forever. This increases the social cost associated with them. Thus, preventing their spread by banning public schooling for unvaccinated kids can help in the reduction of cost associated with the actual disease management (Wang et al., 2014).

The other main advantage of preventing unvaccinated children in public school is the reduction in the rate of mortality among children below 10 years in the country. The countries public health efficiency is rated based on the rate of mortality especially for children below five or below adolescence age. Vaccines have played a great part in reducing this number and hence enhancing the public health. However, the rate of mortality for this age would be increased by the current situation. Banning unvaccinated children from public school will reduce their exposure to diseases outbreaks and hence reduce their chances of survival to adulthood. Thus, this step will be more to their advantage since young children have a higher tendency of acquiring diseases and poor ability to fight them (Orenstein & Hinman, 1999).

Conclusion

The introduction of nonmedical exemptions in the mandatory school vaccination law has subjected the American public into a greater danger of vaccine preventable diseases outbreak. Unvaccinated children are known to have a higher danger of getting these diseases, and spreading them to other children. To reduce the chances for the occurrence of this situation, the country should ban unvaccinated children from enrollment in public schools and instead, their parents should organize for private home learning. This will reduce the social and economic cost associated with managing vaccine preventable disease outbreaks, reduce distress in schools and increase the chances of unvaccinated children’s survival to adulthood.

Reference

Ciolli, A. (2008). Mandatory school vaccinations: The role of tort law. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 81(3), 129-137.

Orenstein, W., & Hinman, A. (1999). The immunization system in the United States: the role of school immunization laws. Vaccine, 17,(Suppl 3), S19–24.

Wang, E., Clymer, J., Davis-Hayes, C., & Buttenheim, A. (2014). Nonmedical exemptions from school immunization requirements: a systematic review. AJPH, 104, e62-e84.