Vulnerable people hold their hopes on a bill to strengthen immunization standards

When Matt Hogenauer walks down the halls of Falmouth High School, he wonders if he is exposed to preventable infectious diseases – a dangerous health risk for him that would not be a major problem if Maine did not have as much unvaccinated students.

"It's possible that all of this makes me very sick," said Hogenauer, a senior.

Hogenauer has non-rheumatoid arthritis and the medications that he takes suppress his immune system, making him vulnerable to infectious diseases such as whooping cough, measles, mumps and chicken pox.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Maine has one of the highest rates of refusal to vaccinate in the country, with parents giving up mandatory vaccinations for their children. This means that the state is susceptible to epidemics of infectious diseases and has the highest rate of whooping cough in the country, whooping cough.

On Wednesday, the Legislative Assembly Education Committee will hold a public hearing on a bill sponsored by Representative Ryan Tipping of D-Orono, which would eliminate all non-medical exemptions from mandatory vaccinations. If approved, Maine will join California, West Virginia and Mississippi as the only states to do so.

Washington State and New York City are struggling with measles outbreaks caused by unvaccinated people who spread the infectious disease. To date, 71 people have been affected by measles in Washington and 133 in New York, according to health officials. In a private school in Brooklyn, an unvaccinated student infected at least 21 others with measles, the New York Times reported.

From January 1 to February 28 this year, 206 cases of measles were reported in 11 states, from Washington, Connecticut, the Maine CDC announced Friday. The last case of measles reported in Maine dates back to 2017, the agency said, and the infected person had contracted the disease after a trip abroad.

"Measles is still common in many parts of the world, including countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa," said the Maine CDC in its statement. "People who are not vaccinated can contract measles on their travels, then bring it back to the US and infect other unvaccinated people."

In Maine, the per capita rate of pertussis is the highest in the country, with 446 cases in 2018, more than five times the national average. Until February, 95 pertussis cases have been reported in Maine this year, but are expected to follow until 2018.

Hogenauer will be out of Maine schools by the time the bill comes into effect – he is scheduled to attend a pre-medical program at Haverford College near Philadelphia this fall – but he said that for health benefits from other Maine students, he became a staunch supporter of the bill.

"I compare the fact of not being vaccinated with impaired driving. You are not only exposing yourself to risks, but you can also hurt others, "he said.

Hogenauer, 17, said he contracted whooping cough in 2016 and he suspects – although he can not prove it – that other students he knew had not been vaccinated and that he have transmitted the disease.

"That's when the anti-vaccine movement became a real and tangible thing for me," said Hogenauer. "I had a very bad cough for two to three weeks."

Hogenauer's health largely depends on "collective immunity", which is the protection afforded to immunocompromised or children too young to be vaccinated. When almost everyone is vaccinated, diseases do not circulate as much, which means they have much more trouble spreading.

Some schools in Maine reported dangerously low vaccination rates, compromising herd immunity. For some infectious diseases, herd immunity may be impaired if less than 95% of the students are vaccinated.

The Maine CDC reported that 31 public elementary schools reported rates of at least 15% of unvaccinated maternal students during the 2017-2018 school year, the latest year for which statistics were available.

In 2017/18, 5% of Maine children entering kindergarten – about 600 children across the state – had non-medical exemptions for vaccinations, their parents were not included in the program. being removed for philosophical or religious reasons.

Dr. Laura Blaisdell, pediatrician in Yarmouth and advocate for vaccines, said immunocompromised people are not uncommon.

For example, people who have undergone organ transplants, adults with cancer, diseases such as lupus and arthritis, and people taking long-term steroids all have a potentially weakened immune system. Even people with a common illness like asthma can be temporarily immunocompromised when they take certain medications.

"Many people in our communities live in a state of compromised immunity," said Blaisdell. "If these preventable diseases are circulating, it's dangerous for them. This is the same reason why we do not allow smoking in our schools because we determined it was not safe. "

Research has proven that vaccines are extremely safe and effective and have avoided millions of diseases and thousands of deaths in the United States since the 1950s when the polio vaccine was introduced. Vaccines against measles, mumps and other common diseases became available in the 1960s, while the chickenpox vaccine was introduced in the 1990s.

The myths that vaccines cause autism have been debunked and the 1998 research that a link was removed has been removed and retracted. In Denmark, a new study of 650,000 children was studied for 10 years and published in March. She has not yet shown any connection between autism and vaccines.

Blaisdell said people perpetuating scientific lies about vaccines are "infuriating, fundamentally useless and unfair. Parents who decide not to vaccinate their children generally do not have to face the consequences of their decisions, "she said.

Bre and Doug Sanderson, of Kennebunk, have a daughter, Ashley, who had been immunized at the maternity ward in 2015 while she was completing chemotherapy treatments for leukemia. She needed to be re-immunized for all preventable diseases.

Bre Sanderson, a nurse, said the weather was difficult, knowing that Ashley would be vulnerable to chickenpox, measles and other diseases that could have resulted in hospitalization or even death. But they also thought it was important that Ashley go to school. They therefore closely watched the situation of her class in her class, and sometimes kept her at home if too many children were sick.

No one in his class had chickenpox or measles, but there was a case of pertussis that year at school. Ashley, now 9 years old, has completely recovered from leukemia and is no longer immune.

"I feel very lucky that it did not happen to us. It's scary, "Bre Sanderson said. "Our child, whatever his health, deserved an education. A school should be a safe area for all children. "

Tipping, the lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said he felt the momentum behind his measure, especially with the announcement of other outbreaks of infectious diseases in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.

"Families and parents want more from this bill in Maine, seeing what is happening to families in the North West. There is an emergency, "said Tipping.

Former Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a similar bill in 2015, and the Legislature had a few fewer votes to defeat the veto. Governor Janet Mills did not say whether she supported Tipping's bill, but in general, she was more supportive of public health efforts than her predecessor.

Hogenauer, the Falmouth High student, hopes to learn more about the immune system during his pre-university studies. Should he miss college weeks by contracting an infectious disease, his schooling could be delayed. But he hopes Maine and other states are beefing up vaccine requirements.

"We should use public schools as a lever to get as many people as possible to vaccinate," he said.

Joe Lawlor can be reached at 791-6376 or at:

[email protected]

Twitter: joelawlorph

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