The immunization policy in the State of Evergreen has adopted about 60 years ago. The policy addressed various issues such as compulsory immunization for healthcare workers and children in public schools. Healthcare workers are exempted from compulsory vaccination only on medical safety reasons while children are only exempted from compulsory immunization due to medical safety reasons and firmly held religious beliefs. Over the past year, the three major counties, Pine, Cedar, and Fir, experienced a serious whooping cough outbreak. One adult and two children died because of the outbreak. It is still unclear whether the three people had been vaccinated against whooping cough. Also, over the past decade, Pine County experienced many bad flu seasons and a measles outbreak. Furthermore, Fir County and Cedar County experienced several measles outbreak. Due to the outbreaks, Evergreen State is considering removing the exemption for compulsory immunization regarding firmly held religious beliefs. The paper will evaluate the decision and propose a policy memorandum to the governor.
All the adults in Evergreen want the best for their children. Therefore, I believe that the exemption of religious beliefs should be removed because of the common good. Immunizations can save a child’s life. Due to the improvement in technology, a child can be protected from various diseases because of vaccination. Some diseases that initially killed or injured thousands of people in the US are close to extinction or are extinct. For instance, Polio used to be a menace in the country because it caused paralysis and death in the entire country but due to vaccination, the disease was eradicated in the country ( Bittar et al., 2018) . Diseases such as measles, flu, and whooping cough can easily be avoided through vaccination. Unless there are medical reasons showing that the vaccines have adverse health effects on children, everyone should be vaccinated.
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Immunization helps the society to protect their loved ones. Over the past decade, the country has witnessed a resurgence of whooping cough and measles. Since 2010, there have been over 50000 cases of whooping cough in the US ( Cornia & Lipsky, 2017) . It affected about twenty babies. Some of the children were either too young to be vaccinated or had weakened immune systems. Also, some of the children had severe allergies. To keep our babies safe, it is important for adults and older children to be immunized. It is important for all children and adults to be fully immunized to protect the family and the entire communities. If all adults and children were fully immunized, the outbreaks could either have been easily controlled or would not have occurred. It is possible that the three deaths that occurred during the outbreak would have been avoided.
Furthermore, immunization can save the state and family money and time. A lot of resources are allocated to controlling outbreaks. Also, the State has inadequate resources to control outbreaks. Proper vaccination will ensure that the state will allocate funds to other issues affecting the county. In some situations, a child who has a vaccine-preventable disease may be denied child care facilities or attendance at schools. Moreover, some vaccine-preventable diseases may cause long-term disability care, prolonged disability, and various financial tolls on the state and family. On the other hand, vaccination will save costs in the long term and can be covered by insurance ( Medu et al., 2018) . Besides, immunization protects future generations. Some diseases used to either severely disable or kill people in the past. However, due to proper vaccination, the current generation was saved from certain diseases such as smallpox. The disease was eradicated worldwide and children no longer require smallpox shots. Also, when pregnant women were immunized against the German measles or rubella, it reduced the risks of passing on the disease to the fetus and birth defects associated with the disease have been drastically reduced ( Zhang & Nawata, 2018) . Due to vaccination, the cases of rubella have not been seen in the US for many years. If Evergreen State implements a quality immunization campaign, some diseases that are currently affecting the state will be eradicated and will not harm children in the future.
However, the decision to remove religious exemption may have a public backlash. Also, the school administrators may have inadequate funds to enforce the new legislation. Also, there are alternative ways of implementing the immunization campaign. Countries such as Japan raised the minimum age of vaccination to two years. The decision was made so that it could allow the children to develop strong immune systems and the adverse impact of some vaccines on a child’s health. Evergreen should consider delaying immunization but later ensure that all children are immunized regardless of religious affiliation ( World Health Organization, 2017) . Everyone has religious freedom but it should not endanger the lives of other people in the society.
The paper evaluates the decision regarding religious exemption and proposes a policy memorandum to the governor. I believe that the exemption of religious beliefs should be removed because of the common good. Immunization helps the society to protect their loved ones. To keep our babies safe, it is important for adults and older children to be immunized. Immunization can save the state and family money and time. Some vaccine-preventable diseases may cause long-term disability care, prolonged disability, and various financial tolls on the state and family. The governor should support the legislation. Furthermore, the governor should consider delaying vaccination age so that children can develop stronger immune systems (Hyle et al., 2017). The only exemption should be medical safety reasons only.
References
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Cornia, P., & Lipsky, B. (2017). Pertussis infection in adolescents and adults: Treatment and prevention. UptoDate. Waltham, MA: Wolters Kluwer .
Hyle, E. P., Rao, S. R., Jentes, E. S., Fiebelkorn, A. P., Hagmann, S. H., Walker, A. T., ... & LaRocque, R. C. (2017). Missed opportunities for measles, mumps, rubella vaccination among departing US adult travelers receiving pretravel health consultations. Annals of internal medicine , 167 (2), 77-84.
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