Buttenheim Alison
Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
LDI Issue Brief. 2012 Sep-Oct;18(1):1-4.
Widespread vaccination coverage among children is responsible for reducing or eliminating 14 serious childhood diseases in the United States. Despite this success, some parents remain concerned about the health effects of vaccines, and choose to keep their children unvaccinated. When population rates of vaccinations remain high enough, even unvaccinated children are protected because everyone around them is immune (so-called "herd immunity"). But clusters of unvaccinated children may threaten herd immunity and lead to increasing outbreaks of preventable diseases. This Issue Brief summarizes a new study that investigates the extent of such clustering, and quantifies the exposure of all California kindergartners to their intentionally unvaccinated schoolmates.
在美国，儿童广泛接种疫苗使得14种严重的儿童疾病得以减少或消除。尽管取得了这一成功，但一些家长仍担心疫苗对健康的影响，选择不给孩子接种疫苗。当疫苗接种的人口比例保持在足够高的水平时，即使未接种疫苗的儿童也能得到保护，因为他们周围的每个人都具有免疫力（即所谓的“群体免疫”）。但是，未接种疫苗的儿童群体可能会威胁到群体免疫，并导致可预防疾病的爆发增加。本问题简报总结了一项新的研究，该研究调查了这种聚集现象的程度，并量化了加利福尼亚州所有幼儿园儿童接触其故意未接种疫苗的同学的情况。
