Look closely, my face reveals a mark of health history that may well be unknown to my children’s children. On my forehead with the age lines – to be kind, the traces of expression – is a tiny chickenpox scar.
My daughter has one, too, on her shoulder, where she couldn’t keep from scratching. Now 22, she weathered chickenpox as a girl, years before the varicella vaccine was approved in the United States in 1995.
A rule change adopted in Olympia last week could soon make severe chickenpox rare among Washington children. The state Board of Health voted unanimously to require kids entering schools or child care facilities to be immunized for chickenpox.
Affecting children 19 months to 12 years old, the requirement kicks in July 1, 2006.
Washington’s 73.1 percent chickenpox vaccination rate for 19- to 35-month-old children was the third-lowest rate in the country, according to a national immunization survey cited by Dr. Tom Locke, Board of Health chairman. The change will bring Washington in line with every state but Arizona, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
Certainly, my kids have had the required immunizations, although parents can opt out for medical or religious reasons. I have been conservative about vaccines beyond the requirements.
My 6-year-old hasn’t had a chickenpox shot. Thinking of the illness as a rite of childhood, I’ve been waiting for him to get it.
Dr. Jack Stephens, an Everett Clinic pediatrician, makes a good case for the shot. “From personal experience, I’m a vaccine fan,” Stephens said. “Chickenpox is often not just an annoyance. It can be pretty miserable; people are hospitalized.”
State Board of Health documents show that in the five years before the vaccine was approved, there were about 165 chickenpox-related deaths per year in the United States. Deaths have since dropped to about 66 per year. The illness can bring on viral pneumonia or infection of the brain.
Beyond those complications, Stephens said, is “flesh-eating bacteria, invasive streptococcal infection.” In children, half the cases of the rare condition start with chickenpox, he said.
So, uh, I’m sold. My boy will get the shot – and soon.
Not everyone favors the rule change.
“Why are we putting another vaccine into children’s bodies?” said Colleen Hill, a mother of two and owner of Country Kids Playhouse child care in Snohomish. “With polio, I understand it. But chickenpox is part of being a kid. I don’t think because you don’t want to miss work you should put things in children’s bodies that weren’t meant to be there.”
Hill said parents often don’t know that even vaccinated children can get sick. “It’s a milder case of chickenpox,” she said.
At the Children’s Clinic, an Edmonds practice with four pediatricians, medical assistant Tiffany Justice agreed. “We see it, but with the vaccine they get it very mildly. They get a little rash,” she said. “Without the vaccine, there could be serious complications.”
Justice, whose 3- and 5-year-old children are vaccinated, is all for putting chickenpox on the required list with vaccines for polio; diptheria-tetanus-pertussis; measles, mumps and rubella; haemophilus influenzae type B; and hepatitis B.
A new immunization for older children and teens is the meningococcal vaccine to prevent meningitis. “This is one of those illnesses that doesn’t happen very often,” Stephens said. “When it does, a child might be well one day but dead by that night.”
The Snohomish Health District’s director of community health, Donna Larsen, is pleased by the chickenpox requirement. “We’re kind of the slow ones. I think our medical care system has been conservative approaching this vaccine,” Larsen said. “It’s good we have moved forward.”
Rita Mell, the health district’s clinic manager, said with the federal Vaccines for Children program, immunizations are free to eligible families. “Varicella is on that list,” she said.
Stephens makes the point that as more kids are vaccinated, those who aren’t will get sick when they’re older, and chickenpox gets more severe with age.
“I have never had somebody sorry they got it,” Stephens said of the shot. “I’ve had them sorry they didn’t.”
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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