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It's Time to end Vermont's Dismal Showing on Vaccinations
MONTPELIER – The state’s largest union believes that Vermont should remove the philosophical exemption to vaccinations, saying that the state’s alarmingly large number of unvaccinated children is a threat to public health.
“We agree with our friend Sen. Kevin Mullin, who is once again trying to make Vermont safer for all of us, especially our children,” said Vermont-NEA President Martha Allen. “The fact that almost a third of our public schools have vaccination rates lower than what health officials consider safe is alarming and unacceptable in 2015.”
Mullin, a Rutland Republican who has been a long-time champion of immunizing all Vermont children, said that the time is right to scrap Vermont’s philosophical exemption. According to figures from the Vermont Department of Health and the US Centers for Disease Control, Vermont parents use the philosophical exemption proportionally more here than in almost any other state.
This week, the Vermont-NEA Board of Directors voted unanimously to support Mullin’s legislation to eliminate the philosophical exemption.
“Before vaccines, millions of children and adults were ravaged by diseases that caused great pain, permanent damage and even death,” Allen said. “And now that we are seeing the country’s worst measles outbreak since it was eradicated in America nearly 15 years ago, it’s time to make sure every Vermont child who can be vaccinated gets the protection they and society deserve.”
Nationally, the US is slipping in the percentage of children who are vaccinated; in fact, our national rate of people vaccinated against measles – 91 percent – is lower than in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. In Vermont, measles vaccination levels among kindergartners is 91.2 percent, second worst in New England and below that in most other states. And, the state health department reports, overall vaccination levels in 30 percent of Vermont public schools are below 90 percent, putting those children and educators at a greater risk of contracting diseases that have been all but eradicated for years. (Vermont’s lowest public school vaccination rate in 2013 was under 47 percent, at Windham Elementary School.)
“As the men and women who work with our children every day, we urge the Legislature to quickly pass Sen. Mullin’s bill,” Allen said. “And we urge Gov. Peter Shumlin to change his mind and sign such a bill into law. The health of Vermont’s children depends on it.”
Shumlin said that he would not favor a change in the law, arguing that it would be best to leave the current law alone. As he told Vermont Public Radio, “We have to find the balance between what we believe and individual liberties.”