Dozens of Ottawa high school students are out of school this week, suspended not because of their behaviour or their classwork, but because their immunization records are out of date.
As many as 900 students are currently facing suspension if they don’t get their immunizations records updated, the city’s public health unit says. Now, family doctors across the city are getting frantic calls from parents scrambling to get their kids’ vaccination records in order.
Under Ontario’s Immunization of School Pupils Act, all students in the province must be immunized against six diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella.
Most children get these vaccines when they’re babies and toddlers, but also need to get a booster against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis when they’re between the ages of 14 and 16.
What many parents may not realize is that it is up to them to inform the city’s public health unit that their children have received their boosters. Many parents fail to let the city know, leaving their children at risk of suspension.
Ottawa Public Health’s Eric Leclair tells CTVNews.ca says the city sent out letters in November to the 18,000 students who hadn’t provided documentation to show their children were vaccinated.
They sent out a second letter in February to the 8,000 or so students who still hadn’t responded. A third letter was mailed out to the parents of about 5,000 students, informing them time was running out to contact the city health unit.
Then, this week, around 900 students wereinformed they were under suspension notice.
Josh Measures, 16, is one of the students told he’s being suspended because the city was unsure about the status of his tetanus immunization.
His mother, Karen Beutel, says she’s angry. She says her son has had all the vaccines he needs, but admits it was her mistake for not informing Ottawa Public Health.
"He was up to date, and maybe as a parent I didn't know I was supposed to call Public Health and tell them,” she told CTV Ottawa. “But that was years ago and I didn't know to do that. So to suspend my child was completely wrong.”
Most have shots, but no records
Dr. Carolyn Pim, Ottawa’s associate medical officer of health, says most parents respond to the first two warnings.
"By the time we get to the final stage, which is suspension, the vast majority of parents have already responded. This final step tends to get their attention,” she says.
Leclair says many of the 900 students who got suspension notices have already updated their records, and he expects most will be completed by the end of the week. He says, while students can be suspended for up to 20 days, suspensions are lifted as soon as the records are cleared up.
Students who can’t be immunized for medical reasons, or who don’t want to be immunized for religious or philosophical reason can get an exemption, after obtaining an affidavit explaining the reasons.
Leclair says the city goes through this process every year, but he says this year they decided to start sending out the letters a little earlier than usual, to ensure that the suspensions don’t interfere with end-of-year exams.
Lack of immunization registry in Ontario
Dr. Vinita Dubey, the associate medical officer of health at Toronto Public Health, says the current system in Ontario, which puts the onus of reporting vaccinations on parents, isn’t ideal.
“Toronto Public Health has gone on the record to say -- and we’ll be saying it again in a report next week -- that we should be getting the immunization records directly from doctors’ offices through electronic medical records,” she told CTVNews.ca.
“As well, we should have an immunization registry in this province that directly gives that information to Public Health, so we don’t need to rely on parents to give us the information, so that we know if kids are up to date.”
Dubey says a registry would make things easier for parents, schools and public health authorities, and would include a “reminder recall” that would automatically send out letters to parents when it’s time to update their vaccination records.
A registry would also help keep track of how many parents are requesting exemptions to vaccinations, Dubey says.
What’s more, a registry would ensure that younger kids, who haven’t started school yet, are keeping up with their vaccinations.
“We have no system in place at all right now to know if younger kids have their primary series vaccines -- the ones they get at 2, 4, 6, 12, and 18 months of age,” Dubey says.
Keeping track of that information is vital, Dubey says, because it’s often the youngest children who are most at risk of vaccine-preventable diseases.
With a report from CTV Ottawa’s Joanne Schnurr
