With the recent controversy surrounding vaccinations and whether or not they cause autism, more parents are choosing to not vaccinate their children.
Despite this, Ball State Students are required to submit a report of their immunizations to be enrolled at the university, including two doses of the MMR vaccination, and tetanus and diphtheria immunity.
“With students in college often living in on-campus dorms, the concern about having an outbreak on campus is that it could spread quickly,” Dorman said.
At Ball State, the last outbreak of measles was in 1989, said Deirdre Dorman, director of the health center.
In 2013, 1.1 percent of Ball State students were not compliant with the state requirements for MMR, Dorman said. That percentage of students ended up leaving the university. That same year, 0.4 percent of students had a religious or medical exemption.
“The plan, should a measles outbreak come to campus, is to contact these groups of people and advise them to leave to avoid getting the disease,” Dorman said. “Based on these numbers, only a small portion of our student body would need to leave and classes could likely continue for the remainder of students.”
Every state requires children entering kindergarten to be vaccinated, unless they have medical, religious or a personal preference reasons to not, which depends by state.
In Indiana, parents can choose not to vaccinate only for medical or religious reasons, according to the CDC.
“Indiana law requires all children be protected from vaccine-preventable diseases like the measles by getting vaccinated,” Indiana Governor Mike Pence said in a statement Feb. 3. “Vaccines protect all our children from illnesses, and our administration strongly urges Hoosier families to have their children vaccinated.”
In 2006, 92.3 percent of American kids from 19-35 months had gotten their measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to the Center for Disease Control. In 2013, 91.9 had gotten their MMR vaccine.
While the national drop might not seem that high, fewer than 90 percent of children ages 19-35 months had received their MMR vaccine in 17 states.
The debate over the relationship between vaccines and autism started in 1998, when Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet on the relationship saying the MMR vaccine caused autism.
However, The Lancet retracted the study in 2010 because of ethical misconduct from Wakefield, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Out of the 13 authors of the study, 10 have retracted the findings.
Even so, some parents are still choosing to not vaccinate their children.
After the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland in California in December 2014, the CDC issued an emergency health advisory. There were 51 confirmed cases of measles linked to that outbreak, and out of those, 55 percent were unvaccinated and 31 percent had an unknown vaccination status.
“In general it is recommended that persons obtain the MMR vaccine because it can often prevent the disease and can also prevent more serious outcomes such as meningitis or encephalitis,” Dorman said.
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