A D V E R T I S E M E N T
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
L.E. BASKOW / TRIBUNE PHOTO
Myrian and Alvaro Fontan make a homemade pizza for dinner with their daughters Jazmin, 2, and Vanessa, 5. After Vanessa (right) nearly died from whooping cough as an infant just before she was old enough to be vaccinated, the Fontans have become vocal advocates for childhood vaccines.
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Alvaro Fontan will never forget the month his baby girl almost died.
It was November 2004, and Fontan felt powerless every time his 4-week-old daughter, Vanessa, fell into coughing fits several times each day and night, for weeks on end.
No one knew it, but she had pertussis – commonly known as whooping cough – a highly contagious bacterial infection that caused her to cough with a terrifying high-pitched choking sound as her tiny airway closed and she stopped breathing for as long as 30 seconds.
Many of those times, “she turned blue – her lips were purple,” says Fontan, the Webmaster for Portland Tribune and Community Newspapers’ Web sites. “I grabbed her, took her outside (for more air); she was almost unconscious.”
The first dose of the DTP shot that protects children against pertussis, tetanus and diphtheria is given to infants at eight weeks of age; Vanessa was just 10 days short when she nearly died.
After doctors at one Portland hospital were unable to diagnose Vanessa’s condition and had called a chaplain to the child’s bedside for what they believed were her last moments, Fontan refused to give up.
He had his daughter rushed to another hospital across town, where Dr. Cynthia Cristofani had been documenting a variety of serious illnesses – including whooping cough – since the late 1980s. Her research was intended to educate others in the medical field.
A video shows tiny 4-week-old Vanessa Fontan fighting for breath as doctors help her. Dr. Cristofani is at the far right of the screen.
Cristofani recognized Vanessa’s condition just in time and started her on the antibiotics that saved her life. Now Vanessa is a spunky, healthy 5-year-old, Fontan says, preparing for kindergarten this fall.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control say the girl’s disease was likely carried home by her older brother, whose high school classmate had come down with pertussis after his childhood immunity likely faded.
Fontan has since become a vocal advocate for childhood vaccinations, and will be featured, along with Cristofani, in a Tuesday, April 27, PBS “Frontline” segment, “The Vaccine War,” scheduled to broadcast at 10 p.m.
Of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, Fontan says: “I think they’re very brave and they’re taking a high chance for their kids to get totally sick. I understand and respect their idea. I do not share their idea.”
Fontan and his wife, Myrian, host a blog (mamishoy.com) encouraging families in their native Spanish to have their children vaccinated and spread awareness of the dangers of whooping cough.
COURTESY OF FRONTLINE
The show (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/vaccines), centers on the debate in Ashland, which has one of the highest rates in the country of parents who claim a “religious exemption” from vaccinations that the state requires for children enrolling in kindergarten.
The exemption rate there is 24 percent; Multnomah County’s is 6 percent. Those numbers are on the rise, however, as an expanding group of liberal, well-educated parents pride themselves on providing their kids a natural environment that may not include all vaccinations.
Amy Lyden and Annie Adams are two of those moms. Both have sons who attend Portland Village School, a Waldorf-inspired North Portland public charter school that happens to have the second-highest rate of kindergarten vaccine exemptions in the county, at 43 percent.
“I just think the human body has the capacity, with proper nourishment, to manage viruses that can attack the body,” Lyden says, noting that the family eats organic, limits its TV exposure and gets plenty of outdoor exercise.
Both she and Adams say they took the advice of their pediatricians with their first child and had them get all of their vaccines. But they later regretted that decision as they did research, opted for a more holistic lifestyle and heard opinions from other parents.
Both mothers say that when their younger sons start kindergarten, they’ll check the religious exemption box because they’ll be picking and choosing which vaccines they receive, rather than following the CDC’s schedule.
When a child in her son’s fifth-grade classroom came down with whooping cough in February, Adams says, the county sent notes home, stirring a buzz among school parents.
Adams says she and others who questioned vaccinations were labeled as “those hippie parents,” but she just took it as an opportunity for dialogue: “I wanted them to come and find out why, and not just judge me.”
Other Portland schools also exceed the statewide average rate of 5 percent exemptions for one or more vaccines. (There’s no public data detailing how many vaccines children don’t receive, or specifying which ones, because parents aren’t asked to provide that information.)
At the top of the list is the private Cedarwood Waldorf School in Southwest Portland, whose 78 percent exemption rate even exceeds Portland Village School.
In fact, the top 18 county schools with the most exemptions – of 10 percent or more of their students – are all Waldorf, Montessori, alternative, private, charter or magnet schools, rather than a plain old neighborhood public school.
Increasingly, parents are claiming a "religious exemption" for not having their children vaccinated, which decreases the overall immunity of children in the classroom.
COURTESY OF OREGON IMMUNIZATION PROGRAM
County health officer Gary Oxman says he respects the rights of parents to ask questions about vaccines. “They have a different view of what’s healthy for their kids and different view of the social contract of immunization, but they’re not irrational,” he says.
Yet Oxman cautions that there could be public health implications down the road, because as greater numbers of children opt out of vaccinations, the phenomenon known as “herd immunity” breaks down.
That’s the term for the general population’s resistance to the spread of disease, due to those who’ve been immunized.
As long as the population meets a certain threshold of people who’ve been vaccinated (80 percent for most diseases; 92 percent for pertussis), the herd immunity will be strong, experts say.
“But the rate of religious exemption is growing, and at some point in future years (there) will be a compromise in herd immunity and that’s something we’re going to need to address,” Oxman cautions.
For a disease such as rubella, with an 80 percent threshold, it would take five unvaccinated kids in a 25-student classroom for the herd immunity to break down, inviting the potential for spread of the disease to younger siblings and other medically vulnerable people who can’t be vaccinated.
Cristofani, the doctor, says the occurrence of vaccine-preventative diseases tends to be higher in states that have a more liberal definition of religious exemptions.
Oregon’s definition, set by state law, is commonly interpreted as a strongly held belief or philosophical difference. That loose interpretation doesn’t bother the administrators of the Oregon Immunization Program, who attribute the increase in religious exemptions over the past 10 years to the increase in vaccine requirements.
When claiming a religious exemption for a child, the parent need only check a box and sign and date the form. There’s no required explanation or discussion with school officials.
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