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New Jersey Mandates Flu Shots For Children
By Ridgely Ochs www.newsday.com
October 17, 2008
While New York strongly recommends that children get an annual flu shot, New Jersey is the first state to mandate it, sparking protests from parents yesterday.
Beginning this year, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that all children from 5 to 18 years old get a flu shot each year. The CDC had already recommended that children from 6 months to 5 years, along with adults 50 and older and people with weakened immune systems, get the shots.
Hundreds of parents and other activists rallied outside the New Jersey Statehouse yesterday to protest the state's requirement that children from 6 months to 5 years old who attend day care or preschool get the flu vaccine, along with a pneumococcal vaccine, by Dec. 31. Instead, many voiced support for a bill that would allow parents to opt out of the mandatory vaccinations.
"This is not an anti-vaccine rally - it's a freedom of choice rally," said one of the organizers, Louise Habakus.
No similar mandates are under discussion in New York State, said health department spokeswoman Claire Pospicil. Pospicil said eight children in New York died of the flu last year and the health department urges kids to get flu shots.
New Jersey Assemb. Charlotte Vandervalk (R-Bergen) said she now has 34 co-sponsors for a bill to allow for conscientious objections to mandatory vaccinations.
New Jersey health officials and the CDC insist the flu vaccine is safe and effective, but Vandervalk and the parent groups who support her bill contend there has been inadequate research into the vaccine's impact on small children.
Flu kills about 36,000 Americans a year; last year 83 children died from flu, according to the CDC.
This story was supplemented with wire reports.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
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