50,000 children at risk of suspension

Outdated vaccination records leave one in three students vulnerable

Nearly one in three Ottawa students are at risk of being suspended from school because their vaccination records are out of date, according to a new report from Ottawa Public Health.

Despite an intensive and costly blitz this summer to encourage tens of thousands of parents to submit updates of their children’s vaccination records by phone or email, 30 per cent remain outdated, according to the report, which will be received by the city’s Board of Health later this month. Students are required to have upto-date vaccination records — or an exemption — in order to attend school.

The large number of outdated records is despite the efforts of more than 40 full-time and parttime staff working this summer, as well as an automated dialer system that called 6,000 parents a day. The effort cost Ottawa Public Health close to half a million dollars.

Medical Officer of Health Dr. Isra Levy said Friday that Ottawa Public Health, which has long been one of the lowest-funded health units in the province, has received an annual $1.8-million boost to its $55 million budget that will help with the additional expenses of the immunization program. That money is, in part, a recognition that Ottawa Public Health has been underfunded compared to other health units, he said.

Ottawa Public Health will begin sending letters to parents later this month notifying them that their children’s records need to be updated.

They will have a month to do so before their child receives a suspension notice. Currently, 50,000 student records are not up to date.

Marie Claude Turcotte, manager of vaccine-preventable diseases at Ottawa Public Health, said the letters will be staggered, rather than sending 50,000 at once. Likewise, she said, suspension notices to those who fail to update their children’s records will begin at the end of December and be sent out in batches until about March. “We don’t want to suspend all the students at the same time.”

School principals will suspend students who don’t comply for up to 20 days, with the suspensions to be rescinded when proof of immunization is received.

In 2013, Ottawa Public Health suspended more than 2,000 students whose vaccination records remained out of date after public health officials sent letters to 18,000 parents of students from grades 7 to 12.

Since then, OPH adopted a “riskbased” system and stopped routine surveillance of students, offering instead targeted clinics and other methods to increase vaccination reporting rates.

But OPH announced earlier this year that it would adopt a program called Every Child, Every Year to insure all vaccination records are up to date every year. Doing so has proven both costly and labour-intensive.

Medical officer of health Dr. Isra Levy has insisted that vaccine coverage is high in Ottawa, despite the chronic problem of outdated records.

He and others say the fact that there are few, if any, vaccine-preventable outbreaks in the city supports that.

But the system of keeping track of vaccinations, combined with a growing list of required vaccines, has bedevilled local health officials and parents.

Students attending school in Ontario now are required to be vaccinated against nine diseases — mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, polio, pertussis, varicella (for children born in 2010 or later) and meningococcal disease.

Despite its efforts, the report tabled Friday says, “OPH has experienced challenges in ensuring the integrity of these records.” The report also noted that most parents, when contacted about their child’s immunization status, “were unaware of their duty to report immunization records.”

Ottawa Public Health will also begin offering catch-up clinics in November for students missing vaccines.