Though some reject vaccinations, there’s safety in numbers

Most children get immunized for various infectious diseases to enter public schools, demonstrated this month by the back-to-school backlog of appointments at the El Paso County Health Department’s Immunization Clinic.

But Colorado parents can just as easily opt out of vaccinating their children, a move hailed by practitioners of alternative medicine and frightening to local public health officials.

In the 2006-2007 school year, 77 percent of Colorado children entering kindergarten were up to date on their vaccinations, up just slightly from 76 percent of kindergartners up to date in the 2005-2006 school year.

In the 2005-2006 school year in the east-central region, which includes El Paso County, 73 percent of kindergartners were up to date.

The statewide goal is to have 90 percent of kindergartners fully immunized for their age by 2010.

“We never expect 100 percent of the people to be vaccinated,” said Rosemary Bakes-Martin, director of the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment. “But if the majority of kids are vaccinated, those few that aren’t are protected because most everybody else is. If you start decreasing that, then you don’t have enough of the herd that are vaccinated and those people that aren’t vaccinated are much more at risk.”

This summer brought a sweeping example of that risk, with a marked increase in the number of cases of pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough, reported in El Paso County over the past couple of months.

In 2006, the county had 18 cases reported.

There were that many last month in the county, representing 50 percent of the cases reported statewide in July.

Thus far in 2007, the county has seen 27 whooping cough cases, and health officials don’t know what the rest of the year will bring.

El Paso is the state’s most populous county, but that’s not the reason for the outbreak, said Dr. Bernadette Albanese, the Health Department’s medical director.

“We see a lot of pertussis because we need to get more people immunized,” she said.

But those who are part of a small but growing movement against immunizations warn that not enough research has been conducted on the side effects of vaccines to warrant blanket recommendations in favor of them.

“There is some circumstantial evidence that the increased use of vaccines that have been recommended over the past two decades cause an increased risk of autoimmune diseases,” said Dr. Joel Klein, a Colorado Springs-based family physician who specializes in holistic medicine.

There has also been concern in recent years that mercury in some vaccinations may be a contributing factor in the increased autism rates.

“Until there is some certainty, many of us feel it is prudent to play it on the safe side,” Klein said.

In the eyes of public health officials, several problems exist with parents opting out of immunization, which is as easy as signing an exemption on the Colorado Immunization Certificate and turning it in to the school.

Not only are individual children more at risk for contracting infectious disease, as those unvaccinated children grow up they put the youngest of children at risk for infection.

“An adult getting whooping cough will probably recover,” Bakes-Martin said. “But if an adult gets whooping cough, and they infect a little baby that is not old enough to get the vaccination, you’ve got a pretty sick little baby.”

And when the unvaccinated go to college, dorms become incubators for disease.

Last year’s mumps outbreak that started at the University of Iowa and eventually spread to Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin is proof enough for Bakes-Martin of the need for a high vaccination rate.

Klein agrees that is a risk but says the stress and poor diets of college students could be just as much of a factor in such outbreaks as lack of immunizations.

Some run into hurdles when trying to travel internationally or join the military and finding out they weren’t given standard immunizations as a child.

“It certainly becomes problematic for that person,” said Jill Law, a nurse and director of the county’s immunization clinic. “They have all said, ‘I sure wish this was done for me when I was little.’”

Klein agrees that when traveling to countries with high rates of cholera and other infectious diseases, vaccines are prudent.

But immunization may be easier on adult immune systems than children’s, he said.

“I think people really need to educate themselves on the actual risks of the conditions that people are being immunized against,” Klein said. “Some of it is treating the whole herd immunity, and I think there is something to be said for that. But I disagree with just blindly following a blanket recommendation.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0232 or carlyn.mitchell@gazette.com