This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Schools

SRVUSD Nearly 100 Percent In Compliance With New State Whooping Cough Law

All 7th through 12th grade students in the SRVUSD are nearly accounted for in the state law mandated push to require proof of vaccination against whooping cough before students are allowed to attend school.

At the end of September, only a small number of students in the  had yet to provide school officials with required proof of their pertussis booster vaccination (Tdap), according to Terry Koehne, the district’s community relations director. 

The deadline has now passed for all of California’s 7th through 12th graders, in both public and private schools, to comply with a new state law approved last fall that requires families to provide their schools with proof their children have received the booster, or a vaccine exemption waiver, in order to attend school.

Pertussis, or “whooping cough,” is a highly contagious bacterial respiratory virus.

Find out what's happening in Danvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

For the first 10 days, it can mimic a cold, after which a severe and persistent cough typically develops, marked by a distinctive “whooping” sound. The violent cough can take several weeks or even months to subside.

The condition is particularly dangerous for infants under 6 months of age.

Find out what's happening in Danvillewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Adolescents are being specifically targeted because, although children usually receive five doses of pertussis vaccine by the age of 5, the California Health Department says “the immunity from vaccines wears off over time and pertussis booster vaccine rates in adolescents and adults continue to be low,” necessitating the push to ensure adolescents continue to be protected they say.

Additionally, cases of whooping cough spiked in 2010 in California, affecting more than 9,000 people and causing the deaths of 10 infants. That was the worst rate in the state in 60 years.

In response, the state Legislature last September passed Assembly Bill 354, which requires that all middle school children receive a Tdap booster vaccine before entering the 7th grade.

This year, there was a one-time push for all students in the 7th through 12th grades to show proof, but in 2012, only incoming 7th graders will be required to do so since the district will now have records for all other students.

About 17,000 students are in the 7th through 12th grades in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District. Of them, only 13 were yet to prove they had complied with the requirements as of last Friday.

All 13 attend Venture School on independent study and only attend school once per week.

In accordance with the requirements of the new law, Koehne says those students will continue to not be allowed to attend school until they provide proof of vaccination.

Koehne said the district did “really well” and the numbers have “come a long way,” considering that as of Aug. 29, 1,400 students had not turned in their proof of immunization.

Koehne said most districts across the state struggled with the new requirement, but the San Ramon Valley schools succeeded by focusing on communicating individually with parents, following up repeatedly, including direct calls and emails from the principals at their schools as the deadline approached. 

“We just hammered the communication to our parents regarding the proof of immunization,” said Koehne. “We were consistently bombarding parents with information and reminders about the requirement.”

Koehne says the main reason parents gave for not providing the required proof was they “hadn’t gotten around to it,” although in most cases the vaccination itself had been done.

Although the state at large experienced a marked increase in pertusiss cases in 2010, Koehne says the San Ramon Valley hasn’t had a “dramatic increase” and has only had a “handful of (pertussis) cases around the district over the last two or three years.”

While nearly all students are accounted for, not all students have received the vaccine.

California allows parents to sign a vaccine exemption waiver, either for personal beliefs reasons or for medical reasons. That requires a doctor’s signature.

A total of 151 students have filed vaccine waivers for the Tdap, the majority of which were for medical reasons. In the event of a declared outbreak by health department authorities, these children would be removed from the student population during the outbreak.

As is often the case when the subject of vaccination comes up, not everyone agrees with the requirement.

Proponents of the law say that providing a pertussis booster to middle schoolers is necessary to continue to protect them and others they come in contact with, particularly infants under 6 months.

They defend the urgent and coordinated push this year to require documentation from all students in the affected grade levels as a significant measure to combat the spike in the number of cases of pertussis in the state.

Opponents say there are still big questions about the effectiveness of the vaccine, as well as personal privacy infringement issues to be considered in the mass one-size-fits-all drive to vaccinate.

Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and President of the National Vaccine Information Center, says parents have justifiable doubts when it comes to the DTaP and Tdap vaccines.

Fisher says the center, a national non-profit charitable and educational organization founded in 1982, “does not advise for or against vaccination, but respect’s everyone’s human right to make informed, voluntary decisions about health and medical risk-taking.”

Fisher has closely followed pertussis trends and vaccines since the early 1980s, and wrote a book in 1985, “A Shot in the Dark,” which investigated the adverse reactions caused by whole cell pertussis used in the DPT vaccine at the time.

Fisher says the current vaccine is still plagued by problems that need to be resolved.

The current DTaP/Tdap was developed with a-cellular pertusiss to address problems caused by whole cell pertussis in the earlier vaccine, something Fisher points out itself has not been adequately researched to assess its effects on the brain and immune function of some people.

Fisher also points out that studies have found that vaccinated people still contract pertussis, or unknowingly transmit it as an asymptomatic carrier, as well as the vaccine’s track record of waning effectiveness.

Additionally, Fisher says, “B. parapertussis (which is not covered by the earlier DPT, nor current DTaP and Tdap vaccines) has been increasing, is common in vaccinated populations and causes B. pertussis-like symptoms that can be confused with pertussis.”

“Until pertussis vaccines are made more effective, it does not matter how many pertussis shots people get, they will not be protected for long and B. pertussis infection will continue to circulate among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated," Fisher said.

Fisher advocates for a safer vaccine to be produced, which will take a lot of time and money.

She says in the meantime people will have to pay attention to basic measures like washing hands, covering mouths, separating sick people from the healthy and eating a healthy diet.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?