Immunisation in Education
Success What would happen to the road-toll if drink-driving became an individual choice? Vaccines are the greatest success of modern science, yet, they’re still an individual choice in New Zealand. They’re safe, effective and necessary for a healthy population. Vaccines eradicated smallpox (Koplow, 2003) and controlled polio, tetanus, measles, varicella, HPV and pertussis. Unimmunised children are a health risk to the entire community (Omer, Salmon, Orenstein, Dehart, & Halsey, 2009). Schools are environments where infectious diseases spread quickly, so a high coverage is needed to keep a population safe, known as herd immunity (Ministry of Health, 2017a; Fine, 1993). When the coverage drops, infectious diseases spread quickly and lead to outbreaks (Hayman, Marshall, French, & Carpenter, 2017). Unimmunised children should not be allowed to attend schools in New Zealand. Freedom of Choice The issue with mandating anything is that the government is then taking away...