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NEW YORK: Maine may soon ban parents from reporting religious or personal beliefs in order to avoid vaccinating their children, making the US state one of the last six years in the US during the country's largest measles epidemic in 25 years.
Legislatures in New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, Minnesota and Iowa are considering similar bills that would only allow exemptions for medical reasons determined by the physician of the child.
The United States has registered at least 704 cases of measles so far this year in outbreaks that US Secretary of Health and Social Services Alex Azar has described as "totally preventable".
Azar and other officials have widely blamed epidemics for spreading false information, including a belief denied by scientific studies that vaccine ingredients can cause autism. This has led to pockets of lower than normal vaccination rates in some communities.
US public health officials said measles was eliminated in 2000, meaning the disease was no longer steadily present in the country. The current epidemic is rooted in travelers traveling to countries like Ukraine and Israel, where the epidemic has declared itself.
The Senate controlled by the Democrats of Maine could vote on the measure of vaccination on Thursday. The House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, of the state, adopted it last month at a vote at the party boundary. Some Republicans claimed that this represented an inappropriate intrusion on the part of the government into its personal convictions.
Ryan Tipping, a Democratic member of the Maine House of Representatives who sponsored the bill, noted in an interview that no major American religion is banning vaccination.
"I've worked with a lot of people with very strong beliefs about this bill and, when people look at it, it's hard to find a religious objection to the incredible amount of good that making those diseases a lot rarer has brought to the world, "Tipping said.
Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, did not answer the question of whether she would pbad the bill if it was pbaded by the Senate.
It was not clear if similar bills in other states will be pbaded. Some were reintroduced after failing in previous sessions.
Other states are considering less restrictive measures to increase vaccination rates. Washington is on the cusp of pbading a bill that would remove personal exemptions for measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, while leaving a religious exemption in place.
Vaccination rates in Maine are among the lowest in the country: 5% of kindergarten children have a non-medical exemption from vaccination, compared to a national average of 2%, according to CDC data.
The World Health Organization has stated that at least 95% of members of a community must be immunized against measles to achieve "collective immunity" needed to protect people unable to receive the vaccine, such as infants and people whose immune system is compromised.
Since 2017, no measles cases have been recorded in the predominantly rural areas of Maine, but state officials have worried about pertussis outbreaks, another childhood illness that can be prevented by vaccination.
The largest outbreak of measles in the United States this year occurred in New York, bringing together orthodox Jewish communities in the Brooklyn District, according to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health officials in New York City. the city.
The 50 states require children to be vaccinated against various diseases in order to attend public schools unless they have medical reasons to apply for an exemption.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures: Mississippi, West Virginia and California, only three states have already banned any exemptions.
While most states allow religious exemptions, Maine is one of 17 states that also allow parents to exclude them based on their personal or moral beliefs.
California banned non-medical exemptions in 2015 after the outbreak of a measles outbreak to the Disneyland amusement park. The state saw the proportion of kindergarten students who received all mandatory vaccines reach 95.1% last year, up from 92.8% in 2015.
He also saw the number of medical exemptions claimed rise from 0.2% to 0.7%. Officials have blamed this error on unscrupulous physicians who have made derogatory derogations, prompting lawmakers to consider new legislation that would give the state the last word as to the validity of the law. " a medical derogation.
(Jonathan Allen report, edited by Scott Malone and David Gregorio)
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