Doctors urging parents to get their kids immunized for new school year

CLEVELAND (WJW) – With the approach of a new school year, the director of the Ohio Department of Health last month was encouraging parents to have their children immunized according to longstanding state requirements.

Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said the kindergarten vaccination rates have declined to the lowest levels in decades across the nation, adding that all of the diseases on the state’s required list are vaccine-preventable.

“These viruses are real threats to our children and we have real and proven protections in the forms of these vaccines,” said Vanderhoff.

The state says doctors are seeing more disease, but fewer children being vaccinated.

“Sometimes we may feel like these vaccines are for diseases of the past. Diseases that are no longer relevant today, but all too often we are encountering proof that this simply isn’t true,” Vanderhoff said.

“Measles, we absolutely did eradicate from the United States in the early 2000s,” said Dr. Amy Edwards of University Hospitals in Cleveland. “Unfortunately we backslid a little bit and measles is no longer necessarily fully eradicated from the United States.”

For all students kindergarten through 12th grade, the Ohio Department of Health requires five different immunizations covering 10 different illnesses, including measles.

In 2022, Ohio experienced an outbreak of 90 cases of measles.

FOX 8 is aware of at least two confirmed cases last year, including one in Summit County.

Skylar Bates, the daughter of FOX 8 Managing Editor Jessica Bates, was the other.

Bates willingly told her daughter’s story, hoping to emphasize how devastating measles can be.

“She had started to spike a fever and if anybody has a preschool child or a child in daycare, they know that they get everything and anything they are exposed to, so I wasn’t too concerned,” said her mother.

“It was a low grade fever. She’d had that for about two days, and then she started complaining that her mouth was hurting. So I thought maybe it was strep and I was kind of waiting and seeing what was going to unfold with her symptoms.

“Then she started to complain that the light was hurting her eyes, and her eyes had like a watery pink texture. But her biggest symptom at the time was the fever and just seeing her mouth hurt. So she had that for two to three days. She woke up one morning and her mouth is bleeding.” she added.

Eventually, Skylar developed red patches, a rash that was not raised on her arms her back, her feet and her belly.

“You know, she’s just not herself. She’s very lethargic. She’s complaining. She’s just miserable. That probably lasted, took her about five to eight days before we started to turn the corner,” her mom said. “That is terrifying because you see your child and this progressively got worse before it got better.”

In addition to the list of required vaccinations, the state also has a list of recommended vaccinations, which include the flu and COVID-19.

Vanderhoff and Edwards both understand the hesitancy that has grown from misinformation regarding the COVID-19 vaccines but insist that with the large numbers of people who have been vaccinated and the results, the scientific evidence shows that the vaccinations are safe and effective.

“If kids aren’t being admitted with pneumococcal pneumonia. If kids aren’t being admitted with measles, that’s less work for me to do, so I’m actually putting myself out of a job by telling people to get vaccinated,” said Edwards.

Dr. Vanderhoff said all of these diseases are vaccine-preventable and he advises parents to listen to what their child’s doctor recommends at their visit this summer. He said you can prevent something terrible if they were to catch one of these worldly diseases.

For those who have no insurance or no provider or who feel they cannot afford to get their child immunized, there is a federally program called “Vaccines for Children” that allows all kids in Ohio to get the required immunizations for free.

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