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SACAMENTO (AP) – California would give public health authorities and not local doctors the power to decide which children can avoid vaccinations before going to school, under proposed legislation on Tuesday. counter what some lawyers call dummy exemptions.
The measure would also allow state and county health officials to revoke medical exemptions granted by physicians if they prove to be fraudulent or contrary to federal immunization standards. The proposal came as measles outbreaks in New York, Washington, DC and elsewhere prompted states like Maine and Washington to consider ending non-medical exemptions.
California has eliminated all non-medical immunization exemptions in 2016, like Mississippi and West Virginia. Lawmakers want California to now follow the West Virginia initiative by ensuring that public health authorities, not doctors, decide who qualifies for medical exemptions. Doctors would send to the state health department the reason for which they would recommend the exemption and should certify that they were examining the patient.
Steps are needed to crack down on some unscrupulous doctors who help parents avoid vaccinating their children by selling medical exemptions through word-of-mouth or online advertising, lawmakers and medical doctors said. major medical groups at a press conference on Capitol Hill.
"They monetized their medical license by selling these exemptions … thus endangering our children and the public," said Sen. Democrat Richard Pan of Sacramento, a pediatrician at the root of the law in force and the new proposition. .
Several upset parents gathered in a Capitol hallway said that this measure was not necessary because the vaccination rate was already high under current law. A protest match briefly broke out between opponents and a supporter of the legislation, recalling the strong emotions that surrounded the original bill and continue to haunt the issue.
Statewide vaccination rates increased after the law came into force, from less than 93% to more than 95%, which is enough to prevent most outbreaks to spread.
But the rate of medical exemptions has also tripled, according to the California Department of Public Health. Although there are still less than 1% of schoolchildren across the country, advocates reported that 50 schools had an exemption rate of at least 15% and that more than half of students were not vaccinated in at least three schools.
This means pockets of unvaccinated children who could spread diseases such as measles "due to the increased number of fake medical exemptions and the spread of false information on the Internet," said Dr. Eric Ball, representative of the American Academy of Pediatrics in California.
According to federal guidelines, less than 1% of children should avoid vaccines if they have a severe allergic reaction or impaired immunity, such as a liver problem, HIV virus or chemotherapy.
But David Ball, of Sacramento, said his family would leave California if Pan's bill pbaded. Otherwise, he must vaccinate his 10-year-old daughter at the age of 7. He said that she had started having rashes after vaccinating her baby, but more generally, he objected to state bureaucrats substituting their decision for that of her Family doctor.
Amber Ebel of Sacramento said the genetic counseling showed that her two children, aged 6 and 10, would be poor candidates for vaccinations, although this is not enough to qualify for an exemption under federal guidelines.
"It would be fundamentally like playing Russian roulette," she said. "You do not know that someone will react before you do it."
Shannon Primer, Educate board member. The lawyer, who serves families with special needs, criticized Pan for what she called an unfulfilled promise to maintain "a strong and strong medical exemption."
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