I can't be the only mom who heaved a giant sigh of relief after her kid's 4-year check-up with the pediatrician. Aside from the yearly flu shot, we were looking at no more vaccines for a good long while, and she was safe from all sorts of nasty diseases. And then the CDC had to go ahead and release a vaccination report today that makes me want to run straight into my daughter's first grade classroom, throw a surgical mask on her, and run out with her in my arms.
Turns out pediatricians' offices aren't necessarily storing vaccines correctly. So ... there goes all my faith that showing up at every well child visit was enough to keep my kid safe. How about yours?
The problem is, they put out this scary report, but they don't really give parents solid answers.
More from The Stir: Vaccine-Friendly Parents Are the Best Thing for Unvaccinated Kids
So here's the skinny: when the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General reviewed 45 different healthcare offices back in 2010, they found as much as 76 percent of them were storing the vaccines at the wrong temperature -- either too high or too cold. Thirteen of those offices (about 29 percent) even had expired vaccines mixed in with the good stuff.
I should point out their sample size was pretty small. Just 45 offices. And the investigation focused specifically on clinicians in its special Vaccines for Children program, a project that provides funding to give low-income kids their shots for free.
We're not talking an epidemic here. Buuuuuuuuuut, they're using the data to warn all healthcare offices about proper storage because of what it means for kids.
Exposure to inappropriate temperatures can reduce vaccine potency and efficacy, increasing the risk that children are not provided with maximum protection against preventable diseases.
It's the nebulous words they use that freak me out here. "Risk." "Reduce." "Maximum."
If they could just tell us "yup, your vaccinated kid is really unvaccinated," we'd know exactly what to do. But it's a whole bunch of maybes and possibilities. And parents don't even know how many offices are screwing up. Is this report indicative of what most of them do? Or is it a drop in the bucket?
If there was an easier way to tell than, say, waiting around until the kid comes down with a case of measles that I thought she'd been protected from, maybe this would stress me out less. My original pediatrician retired, so I can't even go check out his office fridge to see if he keeps the temperature in line.
You can ask your pediatrician to do what's called a titer, a blood test to determine if they have antibodies in their system. But that means another needle being poked into your kid's arm. And we don't even know that OUR kid's vaccine was one of the bad ones.
So we just get to wait. And wonder. And worry. Which is pretty much why we took the kid in to get a vaccine in the first place!
Are you worried that your vaccinated kid could be at risk?
Image via Andres Rueda/Flickr
Kim and Kanye's Baby Name Predictions!
Moms Love Birthday Parties, Too!
Father Knows Best - Happy Father's Day!
Are Cheaters Entitled to Privacy? - A...
Comments 56
to the second comment- those diseases arnt scary, so a baby suffocating to death from whooping cough isnt scary......your an idiot
oh and to the nonmember who said they inject kids with 7 vaccines all at once....YOU OBVIOUSLY DONT GET YOUR KIDS VACCINATED AND YOU DONT KNOW SHIT, YOU CAN "RESEARCH" ON THE INTERNET ALL DASY AND IT DOESNT MAKE ANY OF WHAT YOU READ TRUE, I GET MY CHILD VACCINATED AND THEY NEVER INJECTED HIM 7 TIMES AT ONCE, GET YOUR SHIT STRAIGHT!
To the poster who talked about the "rights" of the unvaccinated - if your decision not to vaccinate only affected your family you'd actually have a leg to stand on, but it doesn't. Your unvaccinated child could kill my baby which is why you do not have the "right" to endanger my child.
A baby in my area caught Pertussis from a boy who sat a few feet away from her in the dr's office for a few minutes. Both were there for check-ups, neither showed any sign of disease (most people with Pertussis have no symptoms for 48 hours before they start coughing but they're just as contagious during that time as when they're sick.). Hours later she was in intensive care and a few days later she was dead. All because his parents were woefully ill informed about vaccines.
People die of Polio all over the world all the time. The reason you don't hear of that happening in the USA is because of vaccines. Stop vaccinating against it and we'll see it here again. There's been a resurgence of it in the UK because people there go on vacation in countries who don't have access to the Polio vaccine, bring the disease home with them and expose the unvaccinated children of people who, like the parents I wrote about above, are totally ignorant to the fact that Polio is alive and well in this world.
The anti-vaccine movement is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of kids. There's a very small percentage of people who have illnesses that make getting vaccines dangerous. For the rest of us, there's no excuse not to vaccinate. People in poor countries that don't have access to the vaccines we take for granted here think we're insane for not taking full advantage of them. I have to agree.
I know someone who's children all got a bad batch of vaccines and each now are autistic from them. Just saying...
I'm With the commenters that are for vaccines. I think it's the STUPIDEST thing you can do to a child is not get them vaccinated! I've done my research and I know the horrors these diseases have reaped!
Herd protections (as in enough people have gotten vaccinated and therefore are more likely to ward off the diseases) only works some of the times nothing is 100% vaccines can't protect against 100% of the disease! But we can help reduce chances by continuing to vaccinate!
@ Jenna Poole there is NO research at all that either confirms or denies that vaccines are the cause for Autism. While it is horrible that they are all autistic it's not necessarily from the vaccines.
Thanks for your support, Lexi Jordan!