YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDRENS’ HEALTH IS AT STAKE                                                               

It was a call I thought I’d never thought I’d get from my son.  He was in San Diego and it was 1998, “Mom, did I have my measles vaccine?”

It seemed that someone had been in his office from another country who had not been vaccinated; had been in the contagious phase; and had come down with measles.    Doug’s entire law firm and anyone who had been there at that time was quarantined by the Health Dept. until they showed proof they had been vaccinated .As my mind scurried through Tupperware boxes remembering where I stored his shot records I decades ago, I very proudly told Doug that West Virginia was one of 5 states in the US to only allow medical exemptions to required vaccinations before entering school so he could not have enterered kindergarten without his vaccinations   The chicken pox, measles, mumps and whooping cough had just been combined into a single vaccine in 1973 when Doug started school.   His generation was the first to get the combo.

My mother may have feared polio and  I was the first generation to get the polio vaccine.  It was a Godsend. My generation of mothers feared measles and its complications..Fifty out 1,000 children died from measles, others went blind.  Bless the researchers who work so fervently to protect our children and eradicate childhood diseases.

And, now as a former legislator who never dreamed she would report we need to take action to keep that protection for our kids in placeI must tell you there is a threat to our kids well –being.

HB 5105 passed the House of Delegates and is now in the Senate.  It allows for ambiguous religious exemptions, exempts parochial schools from the requirement. and veritably wipes out the protection your children have from an unvaccinated child. While originally targeted to children who  attended virtual school, the unprotected categories grew with amendments in the House.  Our Delegate Pat McGeehan is one of the sponsors.     

Our kids need that protection! E-mail, phone, visit, do what you can to let Senators Ryan Weld and Laura Wakim Chapman to kill the bill.   It’s quite simply a very serious threat to our childrens’ health