By Rod Rose
Assistant Managing Editor
Dover — Less than 200 children in the Lebanon Community School Corp. haven’t received state-mandated vaccinations, and local health officials are confident that number will shrink rapidly.
A shot clinic will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Farm Bureau Community Building at the Boone County 4-H Fairgrounds, 1300 E. 100 S, Lebanon, said Aly Stewart, volunteer coordinator for the Boone County Health Department.
It’s the second such effort: The BCHD mobilized its corps of medical volunteers to help at a shot clinic Aug. 7 at Traders Point Christian Church, 6590 S. Indianapolis Road, Whitestown.
“We vaccinated nearly 300 students; that was a pretty good turnout,” Cindy Murphy, RN, director of the BCHD’s nursing and vital records division, said Friday.
The health department has given about 2,500 injections of the required vaccines, but some students are getting multiple shots, Murphy said.
“We’re in communication with the schools, as far as getting their students compliant,” Murphy said. “School nurses are reviewing records ... and getting an accurate picture of who needs to be vaccinated.”
Indiana now requires children in grades six through 12 received meningococcal conjugate, tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis (also called Tdap) and chickenpox (varicella) vaccines before they can attend classes.
Murphy said an unknown number of the Lebanon students who hadn’t been vaccinated have scheduled appointments with family doctor; have an appointment with the health department, or have “an intention of attending one of our clinics.” Those students have been given waivers by school officials to attend classes, Murphy said.
Murphy said the health department was “not on the enforcement side” of the mandatory vaccines; “that’s between the schools, the state Department of Education, and the State Department of Health,” she said.
Indiana is badly behind federal recommendations for the percentage of children with vaccinations, said Dr. Jeffrey Beardmore, medical director for UnitedHealthCare of Indiana.
Indiana’s vaccination coverage rate is 74.7 percent for children between 19 and 35 months old, Dr. Beardmore said. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s goal is to have 90 percent of children be current on their shots.
The gap between the CDC goal and Hoosier reality “is a troubling trend that could prove hazardous to Indiana’s health,” Dr. Beardmore said.
Children from newborn through 6 years should have “timely inoculation against hepatitis A and B, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis, polio, measles-mumps-rubella and other diseases,” Dr. Beardmore said.
More information on when children should receive vaccinations is on the Web at www.cdc.gov/vaccines and through The National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, www.hmhb.org.
