Measles outbreaks in Europe, California, Ontario and Quebec have made vaccination a hot topic in the news. The subject was brought home to Bowen Island recently with one unconfirmed case of the whooping cough in a child attending Bowen Island Montessori School, and one misdiagnosed case of whooping cough at the Bowen Island Children’s Centre.
Helen Davenport, director of the Montessori School says she let Vancouver Coastal Health know about the suspected case right away, was passed on to the Centre for Disease Control, and was told that any unvaccinated children attending the school should stay home for 21 days if the test came back positive.
The pertussis (whooping cough) test on the child attending Montessori was inconclusive, and Dr. Mark Lysyshyn, medical officer of health for Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) says that this is not an uncommon result. He adds that the disease crops-up sporadically in the Lower Mainland, but that VCH doesn’t keep it on the list of communicable diseases unless there are multiple doctors reports flagging it.
“Generally, people get more concerned than they should,” says Lysyshyn. “But the proper response to that concern is to get immunized.”
He adds that currently, VCH is on a push to improve North Shore Vaccination rates and is in the middle of a two-year telephone survey with parents of children born in the region, asking for the dates on which the children were immunized as well as reasons those immunizations may have been delayed or may not have happened at all.
“This kind of information is important to help approve and assess our immunization programs,” says Lysyshyn.
