Contrary to popular belief, the number of people getting their child vaccinated doesn't increase when there's a diseases outbreak, a new study finds.
Current hypothesis has it that parents tend to get their children vaccinated when there's a higher risk of catching a disease. As much sense as this makes, University of Washington researchers found that it is not always the case.
Between October 2011 and December 2012, the state of Washington experienced an epidemic outbreak of Pertussis, better known as "whooping cough." Researchers used this opportunity to study the number of children that received the recommended number of doses of pertussis-containing vaccine.
"We hypothesized that a whooping cough epidemic would result in more parents getting their children immunized against whooping cough," Dr. Elizabeth R. Wolf, lead author, said in a statement. "But compared to a time before the 2011-2012 whooping cough epidemic in Washington state, there was no significant increase in receipt of whooping cough vaccines for infants during the epidemic."
Pertussis is marked by uncontrollable, often violent bouts of coughing. This condition often takes a hard toll on an infant's health. Children are immunized from whooping cough by receiving a combination shot known as DTaP, which protects against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis. The vaccine is given in several doses, with the first dose at two months of age.
Wolf noted that 67.4 percent among the 80,311 total infants included in the study were vaccinated before the disease outbreak. There was only a 2.1 percent increase in this number during the outbreak, which is considered "insignificant."
According to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a child's vaccination is up-to-date if he/she receives at least one dose by 3 months of age, at least two doses by 5 months and at least three doses by 7 months.
Researchers were not able to determine why immunization rates don't increase during a disease outbreak. One possible reason could be that a parent's assumption of the adverse effects of vaccination outweighs the fear of catching the disease.
Dr. Roberto Posada at Mount Sinai Hospital suggests that this is no reason to refrain from vaccinating a child as the side effects are minor.
"Almost every child will get some soreness or redness at the site of the vaccination, and maybe a low-grade fever for a day or two- that's usually it," said Posada, according to NY Daily News. "Serious side effects are very rare - it's much more likely that a patient would get a complication from one of the diseases than the vaccine itself."
"Vaccination rates in the U.S. are still below public health goals (and) we don't fully understand what improves vaccine acceptance," Wolf said.
This is because many people don't understand its importance. People are often under the assumption that they won't catch diseases like measles because it is not common in the United States. What such people don't understand is that visitors travelling to the country may bring in the disease and because measles spreads so easily from person to person, the result can be outbreaks in the U.S. too
There are certain reservations in the general public against vaccinations. Celeebrities like Jenny McCarthy have been vocal of the adverse effects of vaccination. The "Playboy" model has been in a lot of controversies after she voiced her "anti-vaccination" views, saying that vaccine increases autism risk in children. Her son Evan was diagnosed with autism in May 2005.
"Isn't it ironic, in 1983 there were 10 shots and now there's 36 and the rise of autism happened at the same time?" she said during a 2008 interview with Larry King. "We need to get rid of the toxins, the mercury-which I am so tired of everyone saying it's been removed. It has not been removed from the shots."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that in the 2012-2013 season 90 percent of children who died from the flu had not been vaccinated. Findings of the current study were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
