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IAC Express 2007 |
| Issue number 643: January 29, 2007 |
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Contents
of this Issue
Select a title to jump to the article. |
- Dr. Paul
Offit's commentary published in the Wall Street Journal
- Reminder:
Be sure to continue administering influenza vaccine during the early
months of 2007
- Updated:
IAC revises three of its education materials
- Save $25
when you register for NIC before February 17
- Global
measles deaths drop by 60 percent between 1999 and 2005
- APhA
annual meeting to feature programming on pharmacy-based immunization
- For
immunization coalitions: January 30 is the date for IZTA's teleconference
on foundation fundraising
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| Abbreviations |
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AAFP, American Academy of Family Physicians; AAP,
American Academy of Pediatrics; ACIP, Advisory Committee on Immunization
Practices; AMA, American Medical Association; CDC, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention; FDA, Food and Drug Administration; IAC, Immunization
Action Coalition; MMWR, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report; NCIRD,
National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases; NIVS, National
Influenza Vaccine Summit; VIS, Vaccine Information Statement; VPD,
vaccine-preventable disease; WHO, World Health Organization. |
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Issue 643: January 29, 2007 |
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1. |
Dr. Paul Offit's commentary published in the Wall Street Journal
On January 20, the Wall Street Journal published
a commentary
written by Paul A. Offit, MD, director, Vaccine Education
Center, and chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The commentary originally
appeared in the December 2006 issue of the email newsletter
Parents Pack, which is a publication of the Vaccine Education
Center.
Dr. Offit's commentary discusses the findings presented in a
paper published in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) on October 11, 2006. The commentary as
printed in Parents Pack is reprinted below in its entirety.
Last month [October 2006] the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA) published a study that received little
attention from the press and, as a consequence, the public. The
study examined the incidence of whooping cough (pertussis) in
children whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate them; the
results were concerning.
Vaccines are recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) and professional societies, such as the
American Academy of Pediatrics. But these organizations can't
enforce their recommendations; only states can do that蓉sually
when children enter day care centers and elementary schools擁n
the form of mandates. State vaccine mandates have been on the
books since the early 1900s; but aggressive enforcement of them
didn't occur until much later, born from tragedy.
In 1963 the first measles vaccine was introduced in the United
States. Measles is a highly contagious disease that can infect
the lungs causing fatal pneumonia, or the brain causing
encephalitis. Before the measles vaccine, measles caused 100,000
American children to be hospitalized and 3,000 to die every
year. In the early 1970s, public health officials found that
states with vaccine mandates had rates of measles that were 50
percent lower than states without mandates. As a consequence,
all states worked toward requiring children to get vaccines. Now
every state has some form of vaccine mandates.
But not all children are subject to these mandates. All fifty
states have medical exemptions to vaccines, such as a serious
allergy to a vaccine component. Forty-eight states also have
religious exemptions; Amish groups, for example, traditionally
reject vaccines, believing that clean living and a healthy diet
are all that are needed to avoid vaccine-preventable diseases.
And twenty states have philosophical exemptions; in some states
these exemptions are easy to obtain, by simply signing your name
at the bottom of a form; and in others they're much harder,
requiring notarization, annual renewal, a signature from a local
health official, or a personally written letter from a parent.
The JAMA study examined the relationship between vaccine
exemptions and rates of disease. The authors found that between
1991 and 2004 the percentage of children whose parents had
chosen to exempt them from vaccines increased by 6 percent per
year, resulting in a 2.5-fold increase. This increase occurred
almost solely in states where philosophical exemptions were easy
to obtain. Worse, states with easy-to-obtain philosophical
exemptions had twice as many children suffering from pertussis預
disease that causes inflammation of the windpipe and breathing
tubes, pneumonia and, in about twenty infants every year, death葉han states with hard-to-obtain philosophical exemptions.
The finding that lower immunization rates caused higher rates of
disease shouldn't be surprising. In 1991 a massive epidemic of
measles in Philadelphia centered on a group that chose not to
immunize its children; as a consequence nine children died from
measles. In the late 1990s, severe outbreaks of pertussis
occurred in Colorado and Washington among children whose parents
feared pertussis vaccine. And in 2005 a 17-year-old unvaccinated
girl, unknowingly having brought measles back with her from
Romania, attended a church gathering of 500 people in Indiana
and caused the largest outbreak of measles in the United States
in ten years; an outbreak that was limited to children whose
parents had chosen not to vaccinate them. These events showed
that for contagious diseases like measles and pertussis it's
hard for unvaccinated children to successfully hide among herds
of vaccinated children.
Some would argue that philosophical exemptions are a necessary
pop-off valve for a society that requires children to be
injected with biological agents for the common good. But as
anti-vaccine activists continue to push more states to allow for
easy philosophical exemptions one thing is clear, more and more
children will suffer and occasionally die from vaccine
preventable diseases.
When it comes to issues of public health and safety we
invariably have laws. Many of these laws are strictly enforced
and immutable. For example, we don't allow philosophical
exemptions to restraining young children in car seats or smoking
in restaurants or stopping at stop signs. And the notion of
requiring vaccines for school entry, while it seems to tear at
the very heart of a country founded on the basis of individual
rights and freedoms, saves lives. Given the increasing number of
states allowing philosophical exemptions to vaccines, at some
point we are going to be forced to decide whether it is our
inalienable right to catch and transmit potentially fatal
infections.
To access Dr. Offit's article from Parents Pack, go to:
http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=85382
NOTE: Dr. Offit's Wall Street Journal commentary, titled "Fatal
Exemption," is available to the paper's online subscribers at
http://www.wsj.com
To access the abstract of the JAMA article ("Nonmedical
Exemptions to School Immunization Requirements: Secular trends
and association of state policies with pertussis incidence"), go
to: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/296/14/1757
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2. |
Reminder: Be sure to continue administering influenza vaccine during the
early months of 2007.
Remember, influenza vaccination should continue
through the
early months of 2007. Visit the following websites often to find
the information you need to keep vaccinating. Both are
continually updated with the latest resources.
The National Influenza Vaccine Summit website at
http://www.preventinfluenza.org
CDC's Influenza web section at http://www.cdc.gov/flu
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3. |
Updated: IAC revises three of its education materials
IAC recently revised three of its education
materials. Following
is a list of the updated materials; it explains the changes made
and provides links to each.
(1) Changes were made to "Hepatitis A, B, and C: Learn the
differences." Specifically, the section outlining who is
eligible to receive the vaccines that protect against infection
from the hepatitis A and hepatitis B viruses was expanded to
reflect changes recently made to the ACIP recommendations for
protecting against these diseases.
To access a ready-to-print (PDF) version of the revised
material, go to: http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4075abc.pdf
(2) "Hepatitis B Facts: Testing and vaccination" was updated to
reflect changes made to ACIP's recommendations that expand the
definition of who is eligible to receive hepatitis B vaccine.
To access a ready-to-print (PDF) version of the revised
material, go to: http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p2110.pdf
(3) The patient-education piece "If You Have HIV Infection,
Which Vaccinations Do You Need?" now includes information on the
recently licensed vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV),
tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis (Tdap), and shingles.
To access a ready-to-print (PDF) version of the revised
material, go to: http://www.immunize.org/catg.d/p4041hiv.pdf
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4. |
Save $25 when you register for NIC before February 17
Scheduled for March 5-8 in Kansas City, MO, the
2007 National
Immunization Conference (NIC) is coming up fast. If you haven't
already registered, you can save some money by registering
before February 17. The fee for standard registration is $225;
if you wait until February 17, it goes up to $250 for late and
onsite registration. To register online, go to:
http://conferences.taskforce.org/nic/2007nic.htm
For comprehensive program information, go to:
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/nic
For additional information, contact the NIC conference planning
team at (404) 639-8225 or nipnic@cdc.gov
To plan some fun in Kansas City, visit the official tourism
website at http://www.visitkc.com
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5. |
Global measles deaths drop by 60 percent between 1999 and 2005
On January 19, partners in the Measles Initiative
announced that
worldwide measles deaths fell by 60 percent since 1999.
Following is an excerpt from a press release issued by WHO.
Links to related materials are given at the end of this IAC
Express article.
GLOBAL GOAL TO REDUCE MEASLES DEATHS IN CHILDREN SURPASSED
Measles deaths fall by 60 percent
Measles deaths have fallen by 60% worldwide since 1999預 major
public health success. This exceeds the United Nations goal to
halve measles deaths between 1999 and 2005 and is largely due to
an unprecedented decline in measles deaths in the African
region. The progress was announced today by partners in the
Measles Initiative: the American Red Cross, the United States
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United
Nations Foundation, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization
(WHO).
According to new data from WHO, global measles deaths fell from
an estimated 873,000 deaths in 1999 to 345,000 in 2005. In
Africa, the progress has been even greater, with measles deaths
falling by 75%, from an estimated 506,000 to 126,000. The data
will be published in this week's edition of The Lancet. . . .
To access the WHO press release, go to:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2007/pr02/en/print.html
To access information about the Measles Initiative from the CDC
website, go to:
http://www.cdc.gov/nip/global/measlesinitiative.htm
To access information from the National Immunization Program
website, go to: http://www.cdc.gov/nip/global/measlesgoal.htm
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6. |
APhA annual meeting to feature programming on pharmacy-based immunization
This year, the American Pharmacists Association (APhA)
will offer pharmacy-based immunization programming at its annual meeting. The
meeting is scheduled for March 16-19 in Atlanta.
For comprehensive information on the meeting, including the agenda, go to:
http://www.aphameeting.org
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7. |
For immunization coalitions: January 30 is the date for IZTA's teleconference
on foundation fundraising
The National Immunization Coalition Technical
Assistance Network (IZTA) has scheduled a teleconference that will focus on
the basics of foundation fundraising. The network is a program of the Center
for Health Communication, Academy for Educational Development.
The teleconference will be held at 1:00PM ET, January 30. The presenter is
Dr. Bernard Turner, associate vice-president for corporate and foundation
relations, Meharry Medical College, Nashville, TN. He will discuss strategies
for identifying and approaching foundations and present tips for writing
successful grant proposals.
To register, send an email to IZTA@aed.org
Include this in the subject line: "Sign me up for the foundation fundraising
call."
For additional information, or to access earlier programs, go to:
http://www.izcoalitionsta.org/confcall.cfm
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