While the US Senate in Colorado will die the vaccine bill, Greeley's doctors say low vaccination rates could lead to an epidemic

Amy Driscoll, a pediatrician at UCHealth in Greeley and a medical supervisor of nurses in Greeley-Evans School District 6, says she is lucky to be here.

In the 1950s, her grandmother sent Driscoll's mother to care for children with measles. His grandmother thought that Driscoll's mother had been vaccinated against the disease.

She did not do it.

As a result, his mother contracted measles and encephalitis, or swelling of the brain. She developed seizures and missed a half-year of school. She had to rewrite to be able to recover from the disease.

This is one of the reasons why Driscoll hopes all his patients will vaccinate their children, but a bill that could have made it more difficult for parents to prevent their children from being vaccinated died Thursday in the Colorado Senate.

What is the danger?

Group immunity is the phenomenon that prevents a germ responsible for the infection from being transmitted between people. When a population reaches a so-called threshold of herd immunity, it helps protect people who can not be vaccinated.

Depending on the nature of the measles, the threshold is higher: between 93% and 95% of the members of a given population to be vaccinated to reach this threshold, according to the World Health Organization.

In Greeley-Evans School District 6, several schools have a vaccination rate of less than 95 percent – mostly charter schools, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environments.

Overall, the district has a vaccination rate of 97.2%. Frontier Academy, a district charter school, has one of the highest exemption rates, at 6.8%, and 92.8% of its students are up to date with their immunizations.

The vaccination rate in the United States was 91.5% in 2017 and Colorado's current vaccination rate was 87.2%, according to the US Department of Public Health and the Environment .

Although Colorado has seen only one case of measles this year, between January 1 and April 26, 2019, 704 cases of measles were confirmed in 22 states, according to the Center for Disease Control and Disease Control. Prevention.

The CDC said measles was eliminated from the United States in 2000, but 19 years later, the agency said it was tackling the largest number of cases reported in the United States since 1994.

Driscoll explained that measles is the most contagious disease for which health professionals vaccinate, which is why the drop in the number of people vaccinated is leading to such an increase in the number of cases.

"You could stay in the room for 10 minutes with a person with measles, and if you're not vaccinated, you have a 90% chance of getting measles," she said.

According to the CDC, about one in 1,000 children who contract measles will also contract encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, as a result of illness such as Driscoll's mother, and die from it.

But about one in 20 children who contract the disease will contract pneumonia and about one in 10 will be infected in the ear, which can lead to hearing loss.

Why are immunization rates lower now?

Much of the misinformation about vaccines comes from a study published in the 1990s. The study, Driscoll said, drew a false line between vaccines and autism.

Ms. Driscoll stated that none of the health professionals in her office had seen a reaction to a life-threatening vaccine, but they saw children contracting meningitis and losing their hearing, or catching chickenpox and encephalitis as a result of unvaccinated children.

But the concern of some parents can also be explained by the fact that most people have not seen how the country was before the vaccines. In the early 1900s, she said, people had a large family in part because they did not expect all their children to live.

Other reasons, such as religion, may also affect the parents' decision not to vaccinate.

About 70 percent of vaccine exemptions are non-medical, said Driscoll. That's what HB-1312, the vaccine bill, was trying to make more difficult.

Medical exemptions, she said, often concern children who are immunocompromised or have cancer and are undergoing treatment that reduces their body immunity.

These children could be at risk if they were exposed to a child who is not vaccinated and who has a disease.

Is District 6 ready to deal with a possible outbreak?

Driscoll, medical supervisor of District 6 nurses, said the district was still striving to improve its procedures, as after the norovirus outbreak that appeared earlier in the school year that has terminated five district schools and programs.

She said the outbreak, while difficult for families, students and schools, was an opportunity for the district to review and consider revising its policies regarding the epidemic, to prepare for any future eventuality.

With the decline in vaccination rates, she said, it's a conversation that nurses have continually.

Now what?

Proponents of Colorado's controversial vaccine bill say they will continue to press for making it more difficult to remove a child from the vaccine, despite Governor Jared Polis' refusal.

Senator Kevin Priola, R-Henderson, the only Republican to have supported the bill, told the Denver Post that he will be brought back to the legislature next year.

– Emily Wenger is the public finance columnist for the Greeley Tribune. It covers education and government in County Weld and monitors how they spend your money. You can reach her at (970) 392-4468 or [email protected] or on Twitter at the address @ emilylwenger.