I am writing in regards to HB1811 that will remove the requirements for vaccines in children attending school. The most obvious reason to receive these vaccines is that they protect our children from serious and potentially fatal diseases that have been virtually eradicated by vaccines. The other reason is to protect the entire school community.
Because there are some children and/or staff who are either exempted from vaccines or have immunocompromising illnesses and can’t receive vaccine, having the rest of the school community immunized protects these children and staff through herd immunity. There are many autoimmune diseases that are treated by immune suppressing medications as well as people in the school who have cancer and either can’t be vaccinated due to their cancer treatments or are compromised by their treatment. So, it is very valuable to have required vaccines to protect everyone.
If you look in any old graveyard in the state, you will see the graves of many children under two. If you look in the more modern sections of the same graveyard, this is rare. The reason? Vaccines have radically decreased childhood death due to infectious diseases.
Diphtheria was a deadly and rather common disease until the early 1920s when a vaccine was developed. In fact, in 1921, 5,000 children died of the disease. Forthy percent of children who got infected would go on to die from diphtheria. With the vaccine, it is eradicated.
Polio was a very feared disease, as it occurred every summer season, not only killing people but paralyzing many for life. My mother was sent to camp from New York City in the summer as a child to hopefully protect her from polio when it went through the city. The vaccine came out in 1955 and my generation never had the fear she had.
Measles, Mumps and Rubella had four million cases with 48,000 hospitalizations and 500 deaths in the mid-60s and that number declined radically when the vaccine came out in 1971.
In the early 1990s, four million people got chicken pox with tens of thousands of hospitalized and 150 deaths. Of those deaths, 75 were children. After the vaccine was introduced in 1995, cases decline by 97%. Now we see at most 150,000 cases a year with 1,400 hospitalized and 30 deaths (still too many as not everyone gets varicella vaccine). After it was introduced, $23.4 billion was saved due to less time taken off by workers to care for ill family member. There was an equivalent savings due to the MMR vaccine.
My own personal experience came with the H Influenza type B vaccine. This is actually a bacterial illness despite its name. During my pediatric residency, this was the most common infectious disease leading to hospitalization and death in the U.S. I took care of many serious cases during my four-year residency and saw several children die of this. In fact, 20,000 children per year got a Hib related disease (meningitis, epiglottis, sepsis, cellulitis) and 1,000 died per year.
In 1985, the first vaccine was released and hospitalizations to this disease decreased to almost zero. In fact, I have practiced 40 years and have never seen another case when my residency practice used to see several a month. Think of it— 40 years times 1,000 deaths in the U.S. per year is 40,000 potential lives saved. One of those lives could have been your child or grandchild. So why would we want to go back to this?
I fear that decreasing school requirements will lead to more of these diseases spreading among children in our schools and fatalities increasing. All children deserve the freedom to be protected from disease, and not requiring vaccines may make parents think they are not needed as much anymore and lead to less vaccinated children. Will we need to see these diseases and the deaths and disabilities they bring come back to realize the value of school requirements? I sincerely hope not.
Patricia Edwards is a pediatrician based in Concord and is an American Academy of Pediatrics NH chapter representative.