Is this the law Queensland needs in order to protect children from deathly and contagious diseases such as whooping cough? Have your say here.
Victoria has taken a step forward in the battle to protect their children’s health and now the next question is – will Queensland follow suit?
Victoria is set to follow in New South Wales’s footsteps and implement “no jab, no play” laws to restrict unvaccinated children from using childcare centres. NSW introduced the policy in late 2014, which states that children who are not fully immunised are unable to enrol in childcare unless they have an approved exemption for a medical reason or their parents have a conscientious objection.
In order to get an exemption, parents must receive counselling from a medical practitioner and state that they have been advised of the risks of not immunising their child.
While Queensland has yet to follow suit and implement the ‘no jab, no play’ law, Queensland Health have been pushing out their Vaccination-Facts Matter campaign in a bid to get Queensland parents to immunize their children.
According to Queensland Health, more than 15,000 one, two and five year olds aren’t fully vaccinated and immunization rates for 12-month-olds fell from over 92 per cent in 2011 to below 91 per cent in 2013. Only 86 per cent of 12 month old Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are fully vaccinated – and face a higher risk of contracting serious and life threatening vaccine preventable diseases.
About one third of adults who catch measles are hospitalized and in 2013, Queensland had their worst outbreak in 15 years with 52 cases notified to Queensland Health. Whooping cough is highly contagious and can be deadly, particularly for newborn babies too young to be vaccinated. Between the years 2000 and 2013, six Queensland babies died from whooping cough and in 2011, an unvaccinated adult died from diphtheria.
Many Queensland parents choose not to immunize their children because they believe the vaccines are dangerous and will cause autism, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, asthma, allergies or will compromise a child’s immune system. Queensland Health states that these claims are false and that only conventional vaccination produces a measurable immune response and protection against disease.
Alternative therapies such as homeopathic methods or chiropractic principles are not proven to protect against infectious diseases. Vaccines are rigorously tested in thousands of people in progressively larger clinical trials which are monitored for safety. In Australia, every vaccine must pass stringent safety testing before the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) will register it for use. Once registered, the TGA coordinates very robust surveillance to detect any possible safety issues with the vaccine.
Last year, Queensland doctors demanded the introduction of ‘no jab, no play’ reforms in Queensland to give childcare centres the power to ban unvaccinated children, but so far the law has not come into play.
Do you believe in vaccination? Do you think Queensland should adopt the ‘no jab, no play” rule? Let us know in the comments.
As a mother of a vaccine damaged child (look at the pharmaceutical company insert leaflet on side effects) it is a peronal choice and my children are not putting others at risk. The debate is about education for parents not excluding children.
I have a vaccine damaged nephew so did a whole lot of research before I had my two children and when I read there is formaldehyde, mercury and aluminium and other foreign ingredients I decided I wasn’t for my perfectly healthy baby
Do your research and read the product insert first
Doing your research via Google, which many anti-vaccine parents/guardians do, is not doing research! Wake up! It’s really hard to argue with stupid, but when they put our children at risk, this is where we have to draw the line and implement strategies like the one mentioned above. Talk to a parent who has lost a child to a preventable disease and you will see the reality of these parent’s stupidity and ignorance. To say that a child’s autism is directly related to immunisation is wrong and any doctor will tell you this – this is an assumption the parent has wrongly made.
Vaccine damage? Oh dear. Yes there are side effects. But please leave Wakefield back in his discredited box. The hysteria and misinformation is what kills babies. What cracks me up is that I wonder whether those that are anti vax would have the same opinion if pertussis killed their new born?
yes this article is very one sided, the number of vaccine damaged children is staggering and that does not even take into account those that are left unreported or undiagnosed. Every parent should carefully look into the risks associated with blanket vaccinations and not rely on pharmaceutical company say so.
I bet no one who claims to have a “vaccine damaged child” can supply any documentary evidence in the form of a VAERS reporting number or court judgement to prove it.
Vaccines are not perfect and do, very rarely have side effects (less than the chance of being hit by lightning). However almost the whole of the anti-vaccine narrative is a tissue of lies, propaganda, and scientific illiteracy.
Study after study have confirmed the efficacy of vaccination in preventing death. Study after study have debunked the fraudulent autism connection.
Yes, Queensland should introduce a “no jab, no play” policy. It will protect the most vulnerable from dreadful diseases that can kill and maim children. Contrary to the comments above, vaccines are astonishingly safe. Serious side effects are very, very rare, and the vaccines do not contain toxins capable of causing harm. There is no mercury in any childhood vaccine (thiomersal was removed in 2000). There is over 100 times more formaldehyde in a pear than in a vaccine, and the tiny quantity is broken down by the liver in less than two minutes; it causes no harm whatsoever. Similarly, the minute amounts of aluminium salts in some vaccines are completely safe; they are tens of thousands of times below the level which can cause even the slightest harm.
There should be no specific legislative role when it comes to legislation. Since vaccinated children can both carry and contract the same viruses and bacteria they are vaccinated against, there is no reason to legislate on this issue Where legislation should (and doesn’t currently) come in is in ensuring that all medical products (including vaccines) are thoroughly and independently tested. This does not occur at present. TGA receive no government funding at all and are totally dependent on licensing fees from manufacturers in a policy called ‘cost recovery’. This is a huge conflict of interest. In addition, they do no testing. All testing is provided by the companies seeking to license these products. The government has failed miserably in its duty of care and the steady stream of recalls on drugs (Vioxx, Avandia, Thalidomide, etc) after licensure and following tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of permanent injuries is the result. QLD Health’s statement in this article is misleading.
Agree with the independent testing but beyond that I think Oslo Davis identifies the real issue with vaccinations: http://oslodavis.com/content/1.projects/08.PORTFOLIO-Funny/980.-.jpg 🙂
It is a parent’s responsibility to determine whether a child should be vaccinated. Vaccines contain many toxic ingredients, which damage our babies’ immune systems, and many of the vaccines on the schedule are simply NOT needed in Australia, where there is good sanitation, clean water, etc. The list of required vaccines grows longer and longer every year (and the profit-hungry pharmaceutical companies make more and more money), while for many of the new vaccines, nobody knows what the side effects will be. There are quite a few children I know who were seriously damaged for life by vaccines. There are also many very healthy children I know who have NOT been vaccinated. The developed world should take a serious look at PREVENTION through a healthy diet, exercise, etc., instead of using newborn babies as pin cushions. Oh, and maybe more doctors should read vaccine inserts and educate themselves about the pros and cons of vaccines, instead of just taking the pharmaceutical companies’ word for it. Vaccines are NOT safe, especially when administered several at a time!!! Let parents have a choice!!! We are living in a democracy, aren’t we?
Olia, we do live in a democracy, and in a democracy we have legislation that protects society from harm (e.g. murder and grievous bodily harm). This is no different – unvaccinated children put other children at risk. It is a parents choice – but that choice comes with consequences.