As a public health nurse and former immunization coordinator for Yolo County, I must “fill in the blanks” of the op-ed by Samantha McCarthy, published last Sunday.

First, vaccines have saved millions of lives and prevented hundreds of thousands of disabilities caused by vaccine-preventable diseases. Remember the deaths and crippling of polio or the blindness and deafness of infants born to women who were infected with rubella (German measles)?

Vaccines, just like any medication, are not without some risk, principally because each individual has unique characteristics that cause the vaccines or medications to act in a specific manner for each person. For that reason, receiving a vaccine is not “in the door, get a shot and out the door.”

Every vaccine has its own information sheet, available in almost every language, which contains information about the specific vaccine, the disease it will prevent, the most common minor side-effects, more serious side-effects and the contraindications or those conditions in a child or adult that makes the person unable to receive the vaccine. It may be for only that specific time or it may be a permanent contraindication.

This information sheet for each vaccine is given to the parent and should be taken home by the parent, not dumped in the waste basket. The information sheet explains what actions should be taken by the parent for any symptoms following the receipt of the vaccine. The parent must read and decide whether to have the child immunized. No one forces a parent to have the child immunized.

The parent’s signature giving consent for the vaccines can be done a little differently in various medical clinics or offices, but the parent’s signature must be obtained before the vaccine is administered.

There is a California Vaccine Record in which the date of administration, type of vaccine administered and the doctor’s office or clinic where the vaccine was administered are recorded that is given to the parent with the first set of vaccines.

This is the important part: Parents need to keep this record, not lose it and not leave it in their former home or country. They must remember to take it with the child for each subsequent immunization.

The loss of a record, or the absence, for whatever reason, of a record causes children to receive repeat unneeded doses of vaccine. Extra doses do not harm a child, but it is a waste of expensive vaccine, unnecessary discomfort for the child and creates extra records that cause confusion.

Because parents were not diligent about getting their children immunized on schedule or were not diligent about fulfilling all the requirements for school or day care enrollment, despite multiple reminders from the schools and day care centers, California finally instituted the law “No Shots, No School.”

Does that sound harsh? Maybe, but it was necessary to continue to prevent the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases and the resulting aftermath from these diseases.

It is also recognized that there are rare, very serious, side-effects from vaccines. In 1988, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established “to provide compensation to people found to be injured by certain vaccines.”

All schools and day care centers have the blue form on which the immunization dates for each vaccine are entered. Those parents who have specific reasons to decline an immunization — e.g., they do not believe in immunizations or a specific immunization, their faith precludes immunization or the child’s medical condition precludes vaccines — can sign a “waiver” to the law.

But to use the waiver to avoid taking the time to have the child immunized is unconscionable. In signing the waiver, the parent also accepts the conditions — if a vaccine-preventable disease is suspected or diagnosed in a child in a class or day care by a physician, the unimmunized or under-immunized (no record of having the appropriate number of doses for age) children will be excluded from school or day care for the period of communicability for that disease.

That action is taken to prevent the further spread of the disease. Close contacts to the individual who has the disease may be recommended to take a prophylactic medication.

For pertussis (whooping cough), mentioned specifically by McCarthy, the symptoms in adults are quite different from children, making the adults unsuspecting carriers. They think they have bronchitis, but in fact, they are spreading the pertussis bacteria.

It is unfair to make the schools and day care centers the “bad guys.” They recognize the value of immunizations to prevent diseases that can have grave effects on children and their ability to learn.

Schools and day care centers really do not want to exclude children, but they must protect the health of the children for whom they are responsible. The state Health Department’s Immunization Branch and the Centers for Disease Control are excellent sources of information for all the vaccines, including travel vaccines, for children and adults.

The last note — parents need to give their children copies of the immunization record when they go to college.

— Vernette Marsh is a Davis resident.

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