West Vancouver parents score the second lowest in the Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) region when it comes to keeping up to date with vaccinations for their youngest school-age children.
Only 57 per cent of West Vancouver students are fully protected against serious diseases such as measles and whooping cough, which require multiple doses to be effective, when they enter kindergarten. That concerning statistic can be compared to Vancouver where the average up-to-date immunization rate for kindergarten students is almost 20 per cent higher.
Looking at the North Shore as a whole, only 62 per cent of parents are keeping on the vaccination schedule for their kindergarten-aged children, while seven per cent of kindergarten kids on the North Shore have had no immunizations at all.
Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, the North Shore’s medical health officer, said it’s been a struggle to get that immunization rate up. In Lysyshyn’s estimation, the low rates may be caused by a number of factors: parents being too busy, not recognizing the importance of the booster doses or hoping their children will be somewhat protected through the initial vaccine.
Detailed immunization data for every school in the region was released this week by the health region, which collected students’ vaccination records at the start of the 2013-2014 school year.
North Vancouver’s private Vancouver Waldorf School, which offers an alternative form of education, shows one of the lowest immunization rates in the region: only 12 per cent of kindergarten students there have up-to-date vaccinations.
“Historically that has been a school that we know has very low rates, and we have had difficulty going in to immunize,” said Lysyshyn. “In fact, during a measles outbreak (in 2012) we had to immunize some people there and it was quite difficult.”
Vancouver Waldorf School responded to the report Friday saying they have always worked with VCH, and acknowledged that some families chose not to immunize their children while others opt out of specific vaccinations.
“Any such opting out of a single vaccine would result in a student being highlighted as not fully vaccinated for purposes of the Vancouver Coastal Health statistics; nevertheless at the same time they are not unvaccinated,” said Victoria Restrepo Mous, Waldorf’s interim business manager, adding some parents complete their children’s vaccination program post-kindergarten.
Other schools with low rates of children who are up to date on their vaccinations when they enter kindergarten include the private L’Ecole Francaise Internationale Cousteau, Norgate, Queen Mary, Caulfeild and Chartwell public elementary schools and the private Eagle Harbour and Gatehouse Montessori schools. All had up-to-date vaccination rates of less than 50 per cent for students entering kindergarten, according to records given to the health authority.
When it comes to measles protection, 84 and 82 per cent of students in North and West Vancouver, respectively, have received that vaccination. As for the relatively new HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine — which protects girls against some cancers caused by HPV infection — 66 per cent of North Shore grade six and nine students have been immunized against it.
“That (rate) actually, relative to the rest of the region, is not too bad,” said Lysyshyn.
Lysyshyn said the importance of vaccinations definitely gets talked about a lot when there are cases of communicable diseases, and there seems to be support from the majority of the public.
“But there is still a hardcore group of people that are resistant to them or mistrustful of the information we give and it’s difficult,” said Lysyshyn.
