Brought to you by WBIW News and Network Indiana
Last updated on Tuesday, February 3, 2015
(UNDATED) - Indiana hasn’t had any cases of measles so far this year, and the State Department of Health wants to keep it that way.
More than 100 cases of measles have been reported in 14 states as of last week according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many of them stemming from an outbreak that began at Disneyland in California. Those infected were not vaccinated against the highly contagious disease, though Indiana is slightly above the national average.
"Our vaccination rate against measles in our adolescent population is about 94-percent," said Dr. Joan Duwve, chief medical consultant for the Department of Health. She wishes it were higher. "We'd like to see that above 95-percent to really be able to limit outbreaks in our population."
Indiana allows a religious exemption from vaccination requirements for school-age children, which typically covers the Amish population in rural areas. The state does not allow, as California and other states do, an exemption for those with non-religious philosophical objections and those who receive counseling from doctors or naturopaths, who practice alternative medicine.
That's one reason, Duwve says, we haven't seen a major outbreak here as some other states have since the CDC declared measles eradicated in 2002. The worst outbreak in Indiana since then was 2005, when 33 people in the state caught measles.
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