With infectious diseases mounting a comeback, provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall wants childhood vaccination beefed up. Currently, every youngster is supposed to be immunized against a variety of infectious diseases by age two. Booster shots are required later.
But B.C. has no central immunization registry, meaning it’s difficult to track which kids have had their shots and which have not. That leaves public health officials in the dark — they don’t know who is at risk.
To fill this gap, Kendall wants each child’s vaccination history recorded when they enrol in school. And he wants it to be compulsory.
Parents will not be forced to have their children vaccinated. The right to opt out on medical grounds or for reasons of principle will remain.
Nevertheless, if the policy is adopted, all school-age kids would have to provide an official immunization record.
How easy it will be to carry this through is unclear. Both Ontario and New Brunswick use the scheme.
But vaccinations are controversial in several B.C. communities. Kendall has his work cut out for him.
However, he also has a case to make. B.C. lags well behind national vaccination rates in several instances. Canada’s polio coverage for two-year-olds is 91 per cent. Ours is 75 per cent. B.C. is also behind in measles, mumps and rubella shots.
Worse still, while immunization has remained steady for most of the province, it has plunged in our health region. Across Vancouver Island, the number of children who were up to date on their shots declined 13 per cent over the past seven years. More on that in a moment.
School-enrolment records can help in two ways. First, if an outbreak occurs, it would be possible to send unvaccinated kids home for a few days, both for their protection and to slow the spread of the disease.
Two years ago, more than 400 cases of measles were reported in a community in the Lower Mainland — B.C.’s largest outbreak in 30 years. As often happens, the disease took hold in a school and spread from there.
The best way to curtail such an outbreak would be to remove pupils at risk.
Second, school-enrolment records would also give public-health staff an opportunity to talk with parents whose kids are behind in their shots. Many parents are unaware of the proper schedule for vaccinations.
Yet buried in these statistics is another, and just as serious, matter. Let’s return to Vancouver Island. While our vaccination rates are generally low compared with the rest of B.C., across the centre of the Island, they are brutal.
Just 63 per cent of kids in that region are being immunized against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. Only 68 per cent are getting their polio shots. How bad is that? Worldwide, 86 per cent of children now get polio vaccine, and many of those live in Third World countries with better records than ours.
And it’s not only at immunizing that the mid-Island does poorly. Kids aged 1 to 5 suffer unacceptably high levels of dental surgery, a sign of poor preventive care.
Infant mortality in the Alberni district is twice the provincial average, while teenage pregnancies are more than triple the B.C. rate.
So yes, Kendall is right. We must give more attention to childhood vaccinations.
But at least on Vancouver Island, that is merely part of the challenge.
For low immunization rates are symptomatic of a broader failure by governments, health authorities and caregivers. We need a major effort across the entire public-health sector, aimed at vulnerable families.
And with the well-being of our children at risk, we need it now.
