Previously I wrote about Ontario students that were being suspended so that their parents and guardians would be reminded to complete their immunization records, and wondered whether or not it would be more effective to fine the parents instead.
Meanwhile in Australia, the Ministry of Health is considering similar measures to ensure that children are vaccinated or have exemptions on file. Like in Ontario, parents and guardians who are medically, philosophically, or religiously opposed to vaccination can acquire a certified exemption by attending a counseling session with a general physician.
Currently, Australia encourages compliance with vaccination policy by making certain benefits such as the “Family Allowance” benefit dependent on having complete vaccination records. In certain parts of Australia, however, only 85% of vaccination records are complete – well below the 93% immunization rate estimated by the World Health Organization to prevent the endemic spread of diseases such as whooping cough.
Thus the Ministry of Health has proposed to implement a “rigorous” national policy that will identify children lacking immunizations and prevent them from enrolling in school. Australia is targeting preschool age children as the National Health Performance Authority has shown that five year olds have the lowest immunization rates of all children. Furthermore, younger children are fragile, have weaker immune systems and are more likely to die as a result of illness than older children.
To reduce this risk, the territory of New South Wales will be introducing even tougher legislation to boost immunization rates among young children by barring children with incomplete immunization records from attending daycares. Child care centres will now face fines of up to $4000 if children who have no been vaccinated attend without an exemption on file.
Catching them while they’re young is an interesting strategy to keep track of vaccinated children and definitely reduces the dangers posed by disease to children, but would it be feasible in Ontario?
On this side of the Pacific, adults are tracked through their tax records. Teenagers and older children can be tracked through their school records. Babies and toddlers are a blank: not all of them attend a day care centre. Not all childcare providers are regulated. Requiring day care providers to ascertain the vaccination status of their charges would definitely increase the safety of a facility, but would do little to increase the integrity of provincial vaccination records.
As for preventing enrollment into kindergarten without an immunization record, the Toronto District School Board website states that proof of age, address, and immunization are required for all children enrolling into either junior or senior kindergarten, but this is not the case across the province – the York Region District School Board, for example, does not require proof of immunization.
In the interests of future public health and record integrity, I believe that students enrolling into a new school system should be required to have proof of vaccination or an exemption on file. Finding children who have not bee immunized at a young age reduces the risk of a school-wide pandemic more than tracking them as teenagers, where their immune systems have hardened to the yearly flu and unsanitary washrooms. And it’s less likely that removing a student from school at the kindergarten level will be less harmful than removing a student from school at a high school level: the purpose of kindergarten is to ensure that a child is well socialized, can communicate, and experiences problem solving in a novel environment. These skills can be learned at any level of schooling, whereas high school students have a curriculum to follow and may struggle to catch up on work missed during their suspension due to incomplete vaccination records.
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