Immunizations Up; Parents Seeking Just a Little More Control
November 10, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Well, here’s a headline that hasn’t been heard so much of late, it seems:
Immunization rate among children rising (from MSNBC via WTHR TV)
According to a recent CDC survey, 77 percent of children have been fully vaccinated in the schedule of recommended vaccines, while less than 1 percent of children had received no vaccines by age 19 to 35 months. Vaccination rates among children are “at or near record levels, with at least 90 percent coverage for all but one of the individual vaccines in the recommended series for young children.” In Indiana, 94 percent of public schools and 68 percent of private schools have complete immunization data for the 2006-07 school year, an increase from last year.
Sue Goebel, a nurse with the Delaware County Health Department, notes that more parents are choosing to space out the vaccinations for their children, though there’s no data to suggest why this should be done. Says Goebel
“It gives moms a little more control”
—-it gives parents the feeling that they have some right to choose.
And the need to have that kind of choice, or feeling that you have that choice: For doctors, researchers, scientists, medical professionals to understand that need — that might, of parents needing to feel in control—it might make a big little difference.
That is fantastic news!
I know that in our community they’re estimating that they’re going to have a 93-94% coverage rate this year- it’s amazing what a measles outbreak will do to bring back some common sense.
It is nice to see more people getting more vaccinations because last year when there were 128 cases of you would have though there was an epidemic what makes me why nobody thinks that 25000 childern who gets autism every year is not an epidemic. This may happen is that you can see measles and you can not see autism for about 2 years then it is too late.
Well, aside from everything else, autism doesn’t kill people, and measles does. 128 people with measles (I’m not sure where you pulled that number from) adds up to a pretty frightening disease vector.
And of course there have been no studies that have shown any link between measles’ vaccinations and autism.
It’s a pretty easy choice.
And the reasons for the increase in autism diagnoses aren’t because something’s being “caught.”
Kristina; It is not that you caught some thing from someone els,and I don”t think it came from your father or you grandfather. I hate to say that Charlie is a product of you and you alone and conditions that you may have or not have over when you were pregant with Charlie. I think iI got 128 measjes number on this blog some place. As for the 25,000 that comes from The Autism Autoimmmunty Project. Jen you say that you have triplets and you say that they are all diffient . To make as easly as possabe may say one is a one ,one is a four and one is a nine on the speculim. If I coul make a guess as to weight at the time of birth from lite to heavy. That would be from 9-4-1?
I don’t know if the press is affecting how doctors approach immunizations or not, but the last time Eleanor was in for a physical her long-time Ped asked how we wanted the shots split up–all in one day or multiple visits, and spent some time describing those that she felt could be delayed or optional and in what order. She may have done before and I wasn’t as conscious. She has always given us the safety sheets and opportunity to review before consent.
I split them up mostly because I thought all at once on top of an already long physical might not be the way to end the morning, and the office is just down the hill from our house. Did I like explicitly getting the option? Honestly, even if the net result was really equal–I did, but then, one of the reasons that we’ve stayed with our Ped for 20 years is that she has always had a good rapport with both the girls and with us.
FWIW–Eleanor showed no negative reaction at all from having her pre-teen immunizations.
When we got Charlie his shots (he was 9—-these were the shots he didn’t get when he was 5 such as the MMR), he got three at once. He didn’t flinch a bit. We’d been given the option to space them out too by the nurse practitioner but when I weighed having to make extra visits to the doctor’s office, it was better for Charlie to do all the shots at once.
No reaction in him, either.
Both my boys got their flu shot and each one another booster vaccination. Although A had tears in his eyes beforehand anticipating it, neither one flinched or cried. Afterwards they walked out into the waiting area and announced to everyone they had just had their flu shots and it didn’t even hurt! Sounded like a paid advertisement! lol
i THINK WHAT UR DOING IS AMAZING GIVE EVERYONE A LIL AWARENESS,AND EVERYONE WILL AT LEAST THINK ABOUT IT.THANK YOU JENNY.