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By Lydia Nuzum for theCharleston Gazette
With more children to be vaccinated than ever before, the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources is encouraging parents to get their children's shots well ahead of the upcoming school year.
"We want to promote summer as the time to get shots and be ready for school, because we know it begins in August and it's sort of a short summer, and we all want our children to come back to school in August immunized and ready," DHHR Cabinet Secretary Karen Bowling said during an awareness event Friday at Riverside High School in partnership with Cabin Creek Health Systems.
Senate Bill 286, passed in March, will take effect Tuesday. The bill strengthens existing state law by requiring vaccines for incoming preschoolers â a move to lessen the gap in vaccination rates between West Virginia's toddlers and school-aged children.
"We did have a lower rate for day cares. So what did we do? We worked together last session with our leadership and with help from the Legislature to pass Senate Bill 286, which will allow for the first time for day-care entrants to have the same protections as those for kids entering first grade and kindergarten," said Dr. Rahul Gupta, state health officer and commissioner for the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health.
The state's vaccination rate among 5- to 18-year-olds is 97 percent, but among younger children, those rates dip â in 2014, only 85 percent of West Virginia 2-year-olds had received a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...
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WVDHHR urges getting vaccinations long before school starts By Lydia Nuzum, Staff writer for the Charleston Gazette
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