Addressing Declining Vaccination Rates

HAILED AS ONE of the most important advancements in the history of medicine, vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and prevented hundreds of millions of childhood illnesses. Vaccines have been recommended for children since the 1940s, but it wasn’t until 1995 that the official recommended immunization schedule for children appeared. Over the years, this schedule has evolved as vaccines have been added, removed and replaced due to the development of vaccines for new diseases and the success of vaccines in eradicating diseases.

A scant number of parents today are aware of a time when a startling number of children died before vaccines were developed. Consequently, a “vaccination gap” has resulted in fewer children receiving the recommended immunizations, and diseases that were once considered all but eliminated are reemerging. Now, with the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland, concerns about unvaccinated children possibly infecting others have stirred debate over whether vaccines should be mandatory and if religious and personal belief exemptions should be permitted. As new laws being proposed in nearly every state are challenged, our article “Mandatory Childhood Vaccines: The Debate” explores the constitutional foundation for requiring vaccines and the arguments from both sides.

As we note in our article “Measles Makes a Comeback,” the measles outbreak at Disneyland infected 117 people ─ most of whom were unvaccinated ─ from 20 states and the District of Columbia. Prior to that, measles had been declared eliminated in the U.S. since the year 2000. With so little present-day experience with the disease, we share tips from the American Osteopathic Association for recognizing the signs of measles. These tips could have been useful for the families whose children were infected during the Disneyland outbreak, as well as for the healthcare professionals who treated them. In “Measles: A Patient’s Perspective,” we interviewed the parent of one of those children: the mother of 4-month-old Mobius, who had received his first round of vaccines before a family trip to Disneyland in mid-January. Although Mobius showed all the signs of measles, it was days before he was tested and still five days after testing until he was diagnosed.

Among the most recent additions to the recommended vaccines list is the three-dose HPV vaccination series. Although these cancer-preventing vaccines have led to declines in the disease in countries throughout the world, data released in 2014 showed that only 57 percent of girls and 34 percent of boys in the U.S. had completed the vaccine series. Our article “HPV Vaccine: A Dose of Untapped Potential” explains how the vaccines protect and why rates of vaccination are so low, including parents’ concerns over the vaccines’ safety and their belief that their children are too young to be exposed.

Despite the overwhelming historical proof of vaccines’ success in reducing illness and death, an opposition element, “anti-vaxxers,” dates back to the early 1900s. Currently, this small minority’s opposition varies from a right to personal liberties, to religion and concerns about safety based on misinformation and anti-vaccine propaganda. Their objections pose a particular dilemma for healthcare providers: how to convince antivaxxers to vaccinate their children. Possible solutions are addressed in our article “Education and Storytelling: An Antidote to Parental Fears About Vaccine Safety.”

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue of BioSupply Trends Quarterly and find it both relevant and helpful to your practice.

Helping Healthcare Care,

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