Buffalo, NY (WBEN) A new poll finds 1 in 6 parents are hesitating getting their child vaccinated. One area doctor says there are a couple of reasons why that's the case around the country.
Dr. Mark Hikar of UBMD and Kaleida says there are two key points. "I think the first point is that vaccines have been so successful that we don't see the diseases very much that we're vaccinating for. So we don't really see polio outbreaks anymore. Here. We don't see major pertussis outbreaks, although there have been lots of cases this year," explains Hikar. He says an unfortunate side effect of the success of vaccines is that people don't realize how bad these diseases are. "I think the second problem is really just a lot of misinformation about what vaccines do, what's in them. Some of this is just general knowledge of chemistry and chemicals. Chemical sounds scary to the lay public, but these are things that some other people who are kind of anti vaccine latch onto and say, there's a bunch of chemicals in vaccines, and it just doesn't really wash out," says Hikar. He cites Dihydrogen monoxide sounds scary, but it's water. "When you say, like, formaldehydes in a vaccine, don't give it to your children, because formaldehyde something that can kill you. For formaldehyde, the natural product inside your body, formaldehyde and apples, you get more formaldehyde from an apple that you eat than that's in a vaccine dose for a child," adds Hikar.
Hikar says he's seen an impact from parents skipping vaccines for their kids. "Just this year, with a massive measles outbreak in Texas, a number of children have died from that. These are not benign diseases. There's a reason why we continue to recommend vaccinating on the normal schedule for these things," says Hikar. He notes there pockets of Western New York that are vulnerable to having if there was a case of measles that showed up here, having it spread throughout the community before doctors tamp it down with a mass vaccination approach.
is there resistance here? "I am hearing from general pediatricians in the area about different reasons that people are coming up with to try to skip the vaccination or try to get basically have paperwork signed off that they don't need the vaccination beyond religious exemptions," says Hikar.
The poll was conducted by the Washington Post.