The California lawmakers pushed forward a bill on Wednesday aimed at making the child vaccination mandatory for every school kids, intending a ban on the tradition of parents citing their personal or religious beliefs to obstruct the passage of vaccination for their children or using them as a tool to get their unvaccinated wards allowed in the schools.
The state Senate health committee passed the bill by a vote of 6-2.
Democrat Richard Pan, a pediatrician who co-authored the bill, said, “I have personally witnessed the suffering caused by vaccine-preventable diseases, and all children deserve to be safe at school. The personal belief exemption is now putting other school children and people in our community in danger.”
The bill would leave in place medical exemptions to child vaccinations.
Pan proposed the crucial bill in the wake of a recent outbreak of measles in California, which was found to be linked to the Disneyland visit of an infected foreigner in December last year.
Over 150 people nationwide have been diagnosed with the measles infection in the recent months. Shockingly, 126 of the total cases so far are reported from California.
The Disneyland measles outbreak has once again renewed the rigorous discussions over the so-called ‘anti-vaccination movement’ that advocates about the potential side effects of vaccinations. Most of the American parents prefer not vaccinating their children due to several personal and religious beliefs. A now-debunked research work that suggested a link of vaccination with severe diseases like autism has also prompted a small minority of parents to deny vaccination procedure for their children.