Last week, an unvaccinated sixth grader from North Philadelphia was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis. Health officials said the student probably would have been protected by the meningococcal vaccine that is part of the new mandate.
Nationwide, an estimated 33,000 lives and nearly $10 billion in direct medical costs - plus $43 billion in indirect costs - were saved between 1995, when the Vaccines for Children program was implemented, and 2001, when researchers published their analysis in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. The program cost $3.1 billion this fiscal year.
Philadelphia has made particularly good use of its annual $20 million allocation, said Lance Rodewald, director of the immunization services division at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
When the city introduced the varicella vaccine immediately after it was licensed in 1995, for example, an independent study showed a dramatic drop in chickenpox, Rodewald said, and that "helped the whole immunization community to see the value of this vaccine."
He also noted the city's own study of whether a change in the law to mandate vaccination for enrollment in day care meant that more children were, in fact, being vaccinated. (They were not.)
Like any infectious-disease specialist, Caroline Johnson, director of the city health department's Division of Disease Control, puts a high value in vaccines. But for a poor community with inadequate access to health care, she has an even broader goal.
"Our focus is not so much getting the shot into the kid as getting the kid to the doctor," Johnson said.
And then getting the shot into the kid.
Contact staff writer Don Sapatkin at 215-854-2617 or dsapatkin@phillynews.com.
