By Phil Riske | Managing Editor
As a pre-modern medicine kid, I can’t for the life of me understand why tens of thousands of children are unvaccinated.
I had chicken pox, mumps (very unpleasant) and measles.
Chicken pox can lead to painful shingles. Mumps can lead to sterility in males. Measles can be fatal.
Phoenix New Times reports a second case of measles stemming from the outbreak at Disneyland has been confirmed in Maricopa County, where health officials say the infected woman might have exposed up to 190 children and adults at Phoenix Children’s East Valley Center, an urgent-care facility in Mesa run by Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
The original outbreak, which also has affected a Pinal County family, has been traced to a Disneyland source. Seven people in Arizona reportedly have been infected.
New Times reports most of the people infected were not vaccinated, and The Arizona Department of Health Services says more parents have not been vaccinating their children in recent years.
The health department said that “in 2004, about 1.6 percent of children in kindergarten were not vaccinated because of a parent’s religious or personal beliefs. That number was up to 4.7 percent in 2014. In Arizona charter schools, 9 percent of kids are exempted from vaccines because of their parents’ beliefs,” the weekly newspaper reports.
These cases present a complicated clash between religious freedom and child abuse.
In one case, The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled last week that a parent’s refusal to vaccinate her children against diseases is not a “free exercise” of religion, and is tantamount to neglect.
Citing a 109-year-old Supreme Court ruling that gives states broad power in public health matters, Judge William F. Kuntz II of Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled in 2014 against three families who claimed that their right to free exercise of religion was violated when their children were kept from school, sometimes for a month at a time, because of the city’s immunization policies.
See: Arizona Immunization Program
Related: Officials: Up to 1K possibly exposed to measles in Arizona
Which states are the best (and worst) at vaccinating their kids
