Preserve and Protect West Virginia’s Strong Childhood Immunization Laws

By Dr. Steven Eshenaur

February 23, 2024

Disease has played a fundamental role in personal rights for thousands of years. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness cannot exist when communities are afflicted with disease.

Outbreaks of leprosy, plague, tuberculosis, polio and other communicable illnesses have led to restrictions on personal rights in the interest of protecting the larger population. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

West Virginia’s forefathers recognized the need to protect our children from disease. As early as 1931, they enacted laws requiring immunizations for children to participate in public education. These laws have been updated to reflect advances in medicine and the emergence of vaccines for a broader range of conditions.

In the name of democracy, West Virginia lawmakers recognized this need and their duty to protect our children and communities from diseases that can be prevented. Compulsory vaccinations enabled West Virginians to achieve the World Health Organization-recommended 95 percent immunization rate. This is the level of vaccination needed for what is called herd immunity to eliminate measles and other diseases from a geographic region.

Many of the diseases for which there are currently vaccines, such as measles, mumps, rubella, and polio, have no specific treatment. The ONLY way to prevent these diseases from spreading in our community is an effective immunization program.

West Virginia last had a case of polio in 1970 and our last documented case of measles was in 2009. Why? We have a childhood immunization program that is safe, proven, and effective! Six weeks into the new year, there are already 10 states that have reported outbreaks of measles. In 2023, there were 20 states with outbreaks. The danger and risk are real to those who are unimmunized.

The measles outbreak in Ohio in 2022-23 resulted in 85 cases, and 36 children required hospitalization. All the cases occurred in children, none of whom had been fully vaccinated. Nationwide Children’s hospital alone was reimbursed $1.5 million to care for those hospitalized.

The cost of weakening our childhood immunization regulations has a financial toll as well as a human toll. Measles is highly infectious and may result in permanent brain damage from encephalitis, vision loss or death.

Our forefathers and their families experienced the ravages of measles, mumps, tetanus, polio, and meningitis. Modern medicine has worked diligently to protect our communities through the development and testing of vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective.

Now, legislators want to turn the clock back nearly 100 years and remove some of the safeguards in our vaccination policies.

We OWE it to our children to keep our schools safe and free of these disease. In the name of Democracy, keep disease out of our schools and protect our children. Personal freedom ends when our actions injure others; that is why we have drunk driving laws, criminal laws, child safety laws, etc.

If you are anti-vaccination, you are pro-disease. It’s as simple as that. If you are anti-vaccination, you want to weaken or eliminate laws that protect all of our children. There is no other way to see it.

Speak up, West Virginians, and tell our legislator not to join what I call “Politicians for Polio.” It escapes sound reasoning why anyone would want to weaken childhood immunization laws. Our children are more important than any agenda that would bring these horrific diseases back to the Mountain State.