By Genevra Pittman | Reuters – Mon, Oct 3, 2011
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – More than one in 10 parents use an “alternative” vaccination schedule for their young children, including refusing vaccines altogether, according to a U.S. survey.
Based on the findings, researchers worry that more parents may be refusing vaccines in the future, raising the risk that diseases like measles and whooping cough will spread in schools and communities.
(For an abstract of the study, see: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/recent)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccination schedule for kids six and younger includes MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) shots, and vaccines to protect against whooping cough, chicken pox, hepatitis and seasonal flu, among others. (The full recommended schedule is on the CDC website here: http://1.usa.gov/k23A6d)
The Internet survey included 748 parents of kids between the ages of six months and six years. Of those, 13 percent said they used some type of vaccination schedule that differed from the CDC recommendations.
That included refusing some vaccines or delaying vaccines until kids were older — mostly because parents thought that “seemed safer.”
Even among parents who did follow the recommended schedule, about one-quarter said in the survey they thought delaying vaccines would be safer or that the expert-backed schedule wasn’t the best one to follow.
Because no vaccine protects 100 percent of kids who get it, epidemiologists rely on “herd immunity” to make sure enough kids are well enough protected to keep a disease from spreading. But that immunity gets thrown off when there are more youngsters who haven’t had their recommended vaccines.
