Prudent protection

— Rollie Atkinson
Going back to school this year is not just about budget cuts,
larger classrooms, fewer buses and other tough lessons. It’s also
time to start thinking about swine flu and public health department
alerts that might include immunization clinics later in the
year.
Schools across Sonoma County were barely open, when two Windsor
students were diagnosed with cases of the H1N1 (swine flu)
influenza. This week national health officials are predicting the
infections will reach a pandemic level, causing symptoms in nearly
half of the entire U.S. population. Most cases are expected to be
mild, but the national report said as many as 90,000 deaths could
occur.
Large supplies of a vaccine to fight the virus will not be
available until mid-October and local health officials are issuing
stern warnings to schools, families and workplaces to stringently
follow sanitary measures to reduce the spread of the disease. These
include covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when coughing or
sneezing (or using the sleeve of your shirt.) Everyone is being
advised to frequently wash his or her hands with soap and water, or
use a hand sanitizer.
The H1N1 swine flu is this season’s headline disease. But every
school year begins with a set of requirements for all public school
students, beginning with kindergarten, to be immunized against nine
more perennial diseases. These immunization requirements are not
without controversy and many parents in Sonoma County have opted to
exempt their children from some, or all, of the childhood
shots.
Public schools must maintain immunization records for every
student. To attend school, children must have shots against polio,
diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis
B and varicella (chicken pox.) Parents can choose an exemption from
these public health laws based on their personal beliefs or a
physician’s medical advice.
Sonoma County public health officials have expressed concern
that too many parents are taking the exemptions and increasing the
exposure of these diseases to the general population.
According to the county’s health department, it takes at least
85 percent compliance by the public to be immunized against a
specific disease to avoid an epidemic of measles, mumps or the
other listed diseases.
Good doctors disagree about how many and which childhood
immunizations should be required. The MMR vaccine for measles,
mumps and rubella is especially controversial and some believe it
is associated with incidents of autism, although government health
officials disagree.
The promised wave of swine flu cases which are already emerging
in our local school and general population will likely increase
attention to all immunization policies and practices.
At issue will be an individual parent’s right to care for his or
her own child versus a wider issue of providing prudent protection
for a school full of children and the general population.
Not many of us recall the national mobilization and vaccination
clinics of the 1950s that eventually wiped out polio, a disease
almost eliminated from the entire planet, thanks to three decades
of tireless work by the United Nations, World Health Organization
and Rotary International.
Cases of measles are very rare, but an outbreak can spread
rapidly through an unprotected population and cause deaths. Rubella
(German measles) can leave a child deaf. Mumps can cause sterility
and cases of whooping cough are on the rise once again. Only 30
cases of pertussis (whooping cough) were reported in the U.S. just
a decade ago. In a recent year, there were 25,000 reported cases,
the highest total since the 1950s.
Hopefully, as we prepare to guard against or limit the spread of
a swine flu pandemic, we can also have an expanded public
conversation about when an “ounce of prevention is (still) worth a
pound of cure.”