Wheeling-Ohio County Health Board Opposes Religious Exemptions to Vaccine Requirements

photo by: Steven Allen Adams
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signs a series of executive orders last week, including one allowing religious or belief-based exemptions from school vaccination requirements.
The Wheeling-Ohio County Board of Health recently released a statement in support of maintaining West Virginia’s vaccine mandates for school children.
The statement was released Friday in response to Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s day-one executive order allowing religious or belief-based exemptions from the mandated immunizations.
Currently, the state has some of the strictest and most protective immunization requirements for school-aged children in the nation and only allows for exemptions for medical reasons. Medical exemptions might include a child having an allergy to ingredients in the vaccination or undergoing cancer treatment.
Though the board’s statement does not address Morrisey directly, the health department made clear their position that the state should uphold the current strict vaccine requirements.
The statement emphasized that mandating vaccines prevents outbreaks of preventable diseases like polio and measles. These illnesses have been known to cause complications such as “deafness, blindness, pneumonia, paralysis, encephalitis and death.”
States that do allow non-medical exemptions from childhood immunization requirements see outbreaks of these diseases, according to the statement. West Virginia has not seen any outbreaks of such illnesses, which health officials attribute to the strict requirements.
“Vaccines have been one of the most effective public health measures ever adopted that are responsible for drastically reducing and in some cases eradicating dangerous infectious diseases,” the statement read.
Not only do vaccines protect the population against illness, but they also prevent unnecessary healthcare costs, the statement read.
“In addition to saving lives and improving the quality of life, immunizations provide significant economic benefits in preventing healthcare expenditures,” the statement read.
West Virginia is “leading the nation with its strong immunization requirements” which have prevented outbreaks of dangerous preventable diseases.
“The only way to maintain this is to preserve the state policy regarding school immunization requirements as is without allowing personal belief exemptions,” the statement read.