PLATFORM : A Painful Shot for Children

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has decided to abandon this country’s overwhelmingly successful oral polio vaccine program in favor of a polio vaccine administered by injection. The new program will require multiple shots, additional office visits and expenses to complete the childhood vaccination schedule. The result will be fewer children fully immunized, putting the health of all our children at risk.

For 30 years, the oral vaccine has been the cornerstone of the polio immunization policies of the United States and countries around the world. This vaccine has been extremely successful because it is given to children by mouth, sparing them (and their parents) from a lengthy series of painful shots. Oral polio vaccines require fewer doses and are less expensive than the injectable polio vaccine. The new vaccine program will exacerbate the downward trend of vaccinations in Los Angeles County, where the number of vaccine doses administered over the past three years has fallen dramatically by 13%--about 130,000 fewer immunizations.

The switch is being made because a handful of polio cases have been attributed to the oral vaccine nationwide. Los Angeles County has reported no new cases since 1987, and only two cases in the last 11 years. The evidence is far from conclusive that the new vaccine will eliminate the already rare cases of vaccine-associated polio. To risk fewer children being immunized does not make common sense nor good public health policy.