Vaccines protect everyone

By Dr. Ken Cheyne

This is the time of year when parents and students prepare for a new school year. Anticipation builds, as students look forward to seeing old friends and making new ones.

It is easy to overlook a crucial part of your child's readiness to begin or return to school. When checking off your back-to-school must-haves, don't forget to schedule an annual checkup with your medical provider and make sure your child is up-to-date on his or her vaccinations.

Keeping your children current on their vaccinations is not only smart for your family, but for the community. Vaccination is an important public health strategy that affects the entire population. Serious communicable diseases that were previously thought to be eradicated in the United States are starting to recur in our country because of a lag in vaccination rates.

Iowa falls below the public health vaccination goal set by the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Public Health. A 90 percent vaccination rate is the public health standard; in 2008, Iowa achieved only

74.7 percent. As a result, Iowa has seen the resurgence of two preventable diseases.

This spring, a three-county area in northwest Iowa had a serious outbreak of mumps. Eight individuals were diagnosed with the disease, and there were numerous points of exposure that could have caused a much larger outbreak.

CDC data also shows that Iowa had 53 reported cases of whooping cough from January through April, compared with 64 cases in the state for all of 2009.

These cases were preventable through proper vaccination of children. Vaccines are safer and more highly engineered than ever before. Fear of unproven side effects should not be a deterrent to ensuring that children have the proper protection from communicable diseases. All approved vaccines have passed rigorous federal standards.

The Iowa Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics applauds the efforts of the Iowa Department of Public Health to keep Iowans as healthy as possible through appropriate vaccination programs. One example, administered by your county public health office, is the Vaccines for Children Program - a federally funded service that provides vaccines at no cost to uninsured and underinsured children from birth through 18 years of age.

Don't put your children or your community at risk. Prevent outbreaks of communicable disease by having your children vaccinated.

Dr. Ken Cheyne is president of the Iowa Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Comments: iowa_aap@yahoo.com