PerspectiveScary Fact: Vaccination Rates are Falling in Some States
When Peter J. Hotez moved from Boston to Texas to become the Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, he was surprised to discover the how many children in Texas and other Western states are not vaccinated owing to various exemptions. “In the past year, Europe has been inundated with measles, including dozens of deaths, due to large declines in vaccine coverage. I’m concerned the U.S. could suffer a similar fate,” he writes.
Peter Hotez, a pediatrician-scientist, spent most of his career in the Boston-Washington, D.C. corridor developing new vaccines for neglected diseases. In 2011, he relocated to Houston’s Texas Medical Center. He writes in the National Interest that he soon learned that, unlike in the Northeast, where the anti-vaccine movement so far seems restricted to small groups, the Texas anti-vaccine movement is aggressive, well-organized and politically engaged.
There are now at least 57,000 Texas schoolchildren being exempted from their vaccines for nonmedical reasons, about a 20-fold rise since 2003. I say “at least” because there is no data on the more than 300,000 homeschooled kids.
I’m worried these children, who are mostly concentrated either in the Austin area and towns and cities in north Texas, including Plano and Forth Worth, are at high risk of acquiring serious or even deadly childhood infections such as measles or whooping cough. Texas also ranks near the bottom in terms of adolescent girls getting their HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer – only four states had lower vaccination rates.
Together with colleagues from Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, where he works, Hotez did an in-depth study of kindergarten schoolchildren who receive vaccine exemptions across the country. Currently, 18 states allow nonmedical vaccine exemptions for either “conscientious objector” or “philosophical/personal belief” reasons.
A clear picture emerged: Vaccine exemptions are on the rise in 12 of the states we looked at. Indeed, anti-vaccine activities appear to be more of a western phenomenon, especially in the Pacific Northwest (Idaho, Oregon and Washington) and the American Southwest (Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah).
He adds:
my newest concern are the counties in the American West, where a high percentage of kids are being opted out of vaccination programs. I believe that these are the areas most vulnerable to terrible measles or pertussis outbreaks in the coming years. In the past year, Europe has been inundated with measles, including dozens of deaths, due to large declines in vaccine coverage. I’m concerned the U.S. could suffer a similar fate.
