While a recent Angus Reid Institute survey suggested more Canadians parents are hesitant to have their children get childhood vaccines, Public Health Sudbury and Districts (PHSD) said data shows that the vast majority of parents in the Sudbury-Manitoulin area are confident about having their youngsters vaccinated.
Public Health nurse Brenda Stankiewicz was commenting on the Angus Reid survey published at the end of February that said parental opposition to childhood vaccination was growing as Canadians worry about harms of the anti-vax movement.
In some circles, the survey numbers might be considered a setback for public health, but Stankiewicz said the most recent data has suggested a significant majority of parents still favour getting their children vaccinated.
"I honestly can't see that it was a setback for public health. I think in many ways we're getting back on track," she said.
She said information from Public Health Ontario revealed for example that seven-year-olds in 2019 were up to date, with more than 90 per cent having their measles vaccine. That number dropped down to 70 per cent in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
Stankiewicz said PHSD put a push on last year because so many people had stopped visiting their family doctor. She said local numbers are encouraging.
"We are back up to 95.2 per cent of our seven-year-olds having had their measles vaccine,” she said.
She said COVID did hold back some parents and children from visiting their family doctors, but since then she said PHSD has caught up on vaccine acceptance for children.
With respect to the survey numbers gathered by Angus Reid Institute that showed increased hesitancy toward vaccines by some parents, Stankiewicz said she hoped that more people would consult with health-care providers to get reassurance on the value of vaccines.
She said public health agencies are always willing to provide accurate information and science to help people learn and understand.
"We're happy to talk to you about the value of vaccines, and getting some real information from sources that have that science background, to be able to provide the accurate information, having that understanding that vaccines are safe, when you look at all the vaccines in the world that are being delivered," said Stankiewicz.
She said the recent concern over measles is an example worth discussing. Stankiewicz said Sudbury launched a significant measles vaccine program in the mid-1990s.
"Statistically in 1995, we had 454 cases of measles in the community. In 1996, the year we did the immunizations, there were five cases. And in 1997, there was one case in this community," said Stankiewicz.
Despite that, a new concern is rising in Canada that more cases of measles are occurring. Experts say it's because people have become complacent about vaccines.
Stankiewicz said many younger people don't understand the seriousness of measles, because they were brought up not knowing about it. It wasn't a household concern in Canada for the past two generations.
She said that is one of the reasons why some people are not getting a measles vaccination. She said as more people travel, it can become a threat again.
"We do know that with many vaccines, the more people who are vaccinated, the better our immunity will be in the community," she said.
"But vaccine hesitancy, when people don't get immunized, that's actually a threat; it's a barrier to the success of our vaccine programs. Because it only takes one or two people to bring that illness back into the community. And then anyone who's not immunized is at risk of getting that illness.”
Len Gillis covers health care and mining for Sudbury.com.