Vaccine Refusers Fuel Rise of Disease Outbreaks, Study Says

Posted on March 17, 2016 by Lila Abassi

Perhaps it’s because many of us old enough to make decisions regarding immunizations for our children are also too young to remember what it was like to live through the days of measles, diphtheria or whooping cough, that we make stupid decisions.

Recently, the United States has seen waves of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. A recent JAMA study sought to provide concrete epidemiological evidence for how much of the measles and whooping cough (also called pertussis) outbreaks are attributable to parents who delay or seek exemptions from vaccinations.

According to the authors of the study’s paper, individual investigations have uncovered that refusal of vaccines has seen outbreaks of Haemophilus influenzae type b, varicella, pneumococcal, measles and pertussis. These outbreaks are a direct measure of nonmedical exemptions provided to parents who do not immunize their children. Additionally, refusal rates have steadily climbed in the last 20 years.
The incident of a measles outbreak among 111 kids (two-thirds of the total measles cases in the U.S., Mexico and Canada) who visited Disneyland in 2014 was a very obvious example of what happens when parents opt out of vaccinations, as roughly half the cases occurred in children who were not vaccinated but were eligible to receive the vaccines....... Read more