The Oregon vaccine bill is dead as the number of measles cases in the US increases

SALEM, Ore. (AP) – Critics have criticized a decision by an Oregon legislator who killed a bill to vaccinate more children against measles and other deaths. preventable diseases in order to pass a tax on large companies, claiming that it endangered public health.

Despite the adoption of the House and necessary votes in the Senate, the measure to prevent families from evading the required vaccinations was canceled as part of an agreement announced Monday to end a week of Republican marches around a tax on school funding.

Under the state-sponsored vaccination measure, Cheri Helt, R-Bend, children would have been able to give up the immunization prescription only with a doctor's note, or they would not could not go to public school.

Senator Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a Democrat from Beaverton and sponsor of the bill, said that this measure prevented the state from protecting its citizens from a public health crisis.

"This is not how I want our state to be known," she said. "This is a major public health problem and it is essential to solve it."

More than 70 people, including four from Oregon, have been diagnosed as part of a multi-month epidemic in the Pacific Northwest and public health officials have recently declared .

"As demonstrated by the recent measles epidemic, vaccine-preventable diseases pose a growing threat because of the relatively low rate of immunizations in the North West," said Robb Cowie, spokesperson of the Oregon Health Authority, the state's health care organization.

Oregon has the highest rate of kindergarten children not vaccinated in the country, with at least 7.5% of young children applying for an exemption. In some schools, more than 40% of children are not vaccinated as part of the state's lax exemption process. This makes Oregon particularly vulnerable to an epidemic, according to Diane Peterson, deputy director of the Immunization Action Coalition, which receives funding from the CDC.

"Oregon, in particular, is home to a measles outbreak," said Peterson. "All you need is to introduce a person with the disease into the community and it will spread like wildfire."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oregon has been one of many states that have proposed ending the non-medical exemptions, in response to a national upsurge in measles that has already made sick more than 800 people this year.

The state is one of 17 countries that allow families not to be vaccinated at school for personal, philosophical or religious reasons.

The neighboring state of Washington has passed legislation this year to end all non-medical exemptions for measles vaccine, while Maine is working to remove its religious and personal exemptions for all vaccines. Some states, including Rhode Island, have introduced measures to add exemptions.

The anti-vaccination movement gained momentum in the 1990s, after one study alleged a link between measles vaccine and the rise of autism. The study has since been discredited.

Mississippi, California and West Virginia are the only states that have banned all non-medical exemptions. Mississippi has the highest child immunization rate in the country, while the California law passed in 2015 has resulted in a significant increase in the number of immunizations.

Republican and Democrat leaders remain dumb as to why the vaccine issue in particular has been targeted as part of the walkout deal.

Steiner Hayward stated that she was not participating in the negotiations and that she had personally received a call from Governor Kate Brown telling her that the vaccine bill would not advance this session.

Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick of Portland said the compromise was worth it to convince Republicans to return to the Capitol and vote on a $ 1 billion annual increase in school funding. It was not, she said, a response to the vitriolic opposition that hundreds of parents opposed to vaccinating their children received the proposal.

"The people who oppose this bill have behaved in a reprehensible manner around the building," Burdick said at a press conference Monday. "And one of the things that worries me is that I'm afraid some of them do not know that this tactic has worked." This tactic has nothing to do with it. with what happened. "