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N.Va. schools warn students to get vaccines
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Related Topics: Fairfax County
Fairfax County (Map, News) - Northern Virginia school officials are sending out reminders that classrooms are off-limits for students if they don’t have all their immunizations when school begins next month.
“We are trying to get to everyone that we can on this, telling them where they can go to get inoculated,” Fairfax County Public Schools spokesman Paul Regnier said. “We’re not going to even let kids come into the school or even give ’em a schedule.”
Schools across Northern Virginia require a medley of vaccines to minimize the potential for spreading such menaces as mumps, measles and hepatitis B.
Screenings for tuberculosis are required for new students, and all sixth-graders need a booster shot for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis.
“It’s one of those things parents put off and then get done at the last minute,” said Wayde Byard, spokesman for Loudoun County Public Schools. “It’s usually only five or six students who by the beginning of school don’t have all the immunizations.”
Some schools are providing free shots to increase access. Alexandria public school students entering kindergarten through fifth grade are eligible for free physical exams, lab tests and immunizations needed to enter school at a clinic to be held Wednesday, and Arlington offers the shots and exams on Tuesdays and Fridays before the school year begins.
If a student arrives without all the shots, no learning can commence, school officials said.
“We sit ’em in the office, we call the parent and really urge them to go to the health department right there and then,” Byard said.
Starting all the shots can be enough.
If pupils have at least one dose of all vaccines needed, “they’re allowed to stay,” said Katie Brewer, a nurse and clinic coordinator for Arlington schools’ free immunization clinic. “They have 90 days to get the next [shot] in the series.”
dgenz@dcexaminer.com
mhegstad@dcexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
6:26 PM MST on Mon., Nov. 19, 2007 re: "Schools still struggling to get students to meet requirements for vaccination"
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5:34 PM MST on Thu., Nov. 15, 2007
re: "Schools still struggling to get students to meet requirements for vaccination"
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5:41 AM MST on Tue., Oct. 9, 2007
re: "Schools still struggling to get students to meet requirements for vaccination"
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Examiner Reader said:
Total BS it's parents who have intelluct that are keeping their kids from being poisoned
95 agree | 79 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
As a relative of someone totally disabled by a routine childhood vaccine, I now question the safety (& efficacy) of vaccines. Austrailian scientists have linked infant vaccines to SIDS & French scientists have linked Hep B vaccines to MS & Juvenile Diabetes. It's not a fair trade-off.
112 agree | 71 disagree
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Mike Licht said:
>>Re: Local Schools still struggling to get students to meet requirements for vaccination<< This may be more of a medical records problem than a vaccination problem. Stop it this way: When kids get vaccinated, have parents or guardians agree to forward proof of vaccination directly to schools. Don’t add records retention to the pressures on families.
100 agree | 129 disagree
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