Mandatory Vaccinations: What the State Law Requires
By States News Service
Published: January 20, 1991
WASHINGTON— IN the last 50 years, mandatory vaccination in the United States has virtually wiped out the incidence of crippling and potentially lethal diseases like measles, rubella, polio and whooping cough, also known as pertussis.
In the 1930's, there were up to 250,000 cases a year of whooping cough and as many as 7,000 deaths. Currently less than 4,000 cases a year are reported, and they are rarely fatal. Of 347 cases reported in New York State last year, 2, in counties near Albany, were fatal.
The national vaccination standard calls for all children to receive diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, or DPT, shots at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months and 15 months, and then again just before starting school, generally around the age of 5 years.
New York, however, is one of a handful of states that require only three doses of diphtheria vaccine, making the pertussis and tetanus components of the DPT shot completely optional. Unless specifically requested, however, most doctors will administer the three-part vaccination.
"Although it may not be required for school, the routine immunization is DPT," said the chief of the Suffolk County bureau of epidemiology and disease control, Dr. Martin Mayer. He said the vaccine was often difficult to obtain in other forms like diphtheria-tetanus or in singular diphtheria form. A spokesman for the State Health Department said that the state makes the DT shot available and that that 90 percent of the children received the full DPT vaccine.
A highly contagious bacterial infection, whooping cough most seriously affects infants and young children. The disease is characterized by harsh coughing spells, which can continue to the point of exhaustion, vomiting or, in rare cases, the breaking of blood vessels in the brain.
"It's very rarely fatal, but extremely debilitating," Dr. Mayer said. As of November, there were five cases of whooping cough in Suffolk last year and 16 in Nassau.
Other mandatory vaccinations in New York include three doses of polio vaccine and two measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, shots. State colleges are starting this year to require proof of MMR immunization before entry.
Also added this year is a new mandatory vaccine, the HIB, for haemophilus influenza type B. It is intended to protect toddlers against the most common cause of bacterial meningitis.