Skipping vaccines? Think again

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Meningitis killed one child and sickened four others in Minnesota last year, the most cases of invasive Haemophilus influenza type b, or Hib, infections in that state since 1992, according to a report today from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A vaccine to protect against this type of bacterial meningitis has been available since 1992, but only one of the five children had received the primary series of Hib inoculations.

A primary series consists of vaccinations at 2, 4 and 6 months. A routine booster is recommended at 12 to 15 months.

The children were age 3 months to 5 years. Three of them had not received vaccinations because their parents refused or delayed the shots out of worries about side effects. One -- a 5-month-old -- was too young to have completed the series, and a fifth case occurred in a child who had a condition that weakened immunity, the CDC report said.

Public health officials already are worried about a nationwide shortage of the vaccine that has been ongoing since 2007, when one of the two pharmaceutical companies that make it recalled its vaccines because of equipment sterilization problems. But none of the children skipped vaccinations because of the shortage, and the Minnesota Department of Health said that there is an adequate supply to provide the primary series to all children. The shortage is expected to be alleviated by the middle of this year.

Hib was the most common cause of bacterial meningitis in children under 5 years old before the development of the vaccine. Since then, illnesses have fallen from 41 cases per 100,000 young children in 1987 to less than 1 case per 100,000 in 2007, according to the CDC. Parental concerns about possible side effects from vaccines have grown as the illnesses prevented by the vaccines have fallen. Public health officials hope that it doesn’t take a rise in meningitis cases to remind parents of the benefits of life-saving vaccines.

-- Mary Engel