Vaccine program must be a priority

June 1, 2003

Vaccines have been hailed as one of the most important public health advances of the 20th century. Routine childhood immunization programs have been successful in averting serious epidemics and preventing unnecessary suffering across the population. For every dollar spent on immunization, approximately nine are saved in the cost of care for the diseases that are prevented. In recognition of these facts, a federally financed program was created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to offer vaccines free to poor children. This is called the Vaccines for Children Program. Approximately 60 percent of children in the United States qualify for this program. Unfortunately, the Illinois State Health Department has been somewhat slow to stock vaccines under the program and even slower to approve the inclusion of vaccines for the VFC Plus program, which covers the cost of vaccines for underinsured children. Partial funding for the VFC Plus program comes from the state.

It is penny-wise and pound-foolish to try to save money on prevention programs in general and immunization programs specifically. It has been more than three years since the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and more than six years since the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine were recommended for routine childhood immunization by the federal government, with concurrent approval by the Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Most recently, the CDC approved a new five-in-one vaccine for inclusion in the VFC program. There is some question about when Illinois will add this vaccine to the VFC Plus program. This latest vaccine, which combines tried-and-true existing vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), hepatitis B and polio, saves up to six injections for infants. It should be understood that children receive 20 or more shots in the first two years of life. Saving six shots reduces discomfort for infants, parents, nurses and physicians, and the need for fewer injections may improve compliance with the nationally recommended schedule.

It is morally and medically imperative to guarantee that all children, regardless of economic status, are age-appropriately immunized. No single group of children should be denied access to immunizations to save a few cents. Not only can these unimmunized children suffer infectious disease themselves, but they can sustain epidemics of highly contagious infectious diseases in other children who were too young to be immunized or for those whose immune systems could not adequately protect them.

It is time for all of us to dedicate ourselves to the win-win and very logical commitment to supplying all of our children with age appropriate vaccines. This can be easily accomplished if the newly appointed director of the state Health Department, the state Legislature, the governor and all of us make this a priority. Our children deserve no less.

Lawrence D. Frenkel, M.D.,

chairman, Committee on

Infectious Diseases,

American Academy

of Pediatrics, Illinois chapter

Reopen Meigs Field

It is difficult to discuss Meigs airport dispassionately in the face of Mayor Daley's midnight raid. Should victory be the reward for such conduct? Isn't it reason enough to save Meigs to warn other officials and politicians that we citizens demand political integrity, maturity and a higher standard of conduct?

But there are at least two other important reasons why we ask that U.S. Rep. J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) support the permanent reopening of Meigs airport.

First, greatness requires diversity of opportunity. Illinois remains great because it has not succumbed to the temptation of liquidating its unique and often minority opportunities--to replace them with alternative uses which, arguably, the majority might prefer. By example, comparatively few have interest in the classical fare of the Chicago Symphony or in a yacht moored along our lakefront. Yet for those who do, Symphony Center and Chicago's harbors represent an important opportunity for the exercise of such diverse avocations. Meigs, like our concert halls and harbors, represents the opportunity for many to participate in their passion. Let's protect the uniqueness of this state by maintaining opportunities for all.

Second, air commerce requires places from which to depart and arrive. The major portals for commercial air travel are not in jeopardy. But what of the hundreds of smaller airports that form the destinations for corporate and private air commerce? Meigs airport is to the general aviation and personal aircraft pilot what Union Station and the Monroe Street Self-Park are to the ground-based traveler. Of what value is our air highway system without a reasonably scattered matrix of landing locations? It is an important role of government to protect state and national travel systems, including air commerce, from the too often self-interests of local jurisdictions.

We urge Hastert to take all possible measures to assure the continued viability of our air commerce system and, to that end, to seek the permanent reopening of Meigs Field.

R. Winston Slater, Hampshire

Where are those WMD?

What in the world are our fearless leaders going to do with all those weapons of mass destruction they found in Iraq and are keeping secret from us?

V. K. Brown, Hyde Park

Mad cow and the USDA

The U.S. ban on Canadian beef and cattle imports, following on the heels of a ''mad cow'' disease case in Canada, represents too little too late [news story, May 21]. The USDA claim that there has been no confirmed case in the United States rings hollow.

Too little, because U.S. authorities test 20,000 animals for mad cow disease each year--that's only 0.05 percent of the cattle slaughtered, and Canadians do even less. Europeans test that many animals every day. Moreover, most cattle are slaughtered before the age of 4, before mad cow disease symptoms develop. The afflicted Canadian cow was 8 years old.

Too late, because last year, the United States imported 1.7 million head of cattle and more than 1 billion pounds of beef from Canada. This accounts for 7 percent of U.S. beef consumption and NAFTA regulations make sure that we don't know which 7 percent. Consumption of infected beef leads to development of the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob dementia in humans.

It's getting harder every day to trust the judgment of USDA officials to tell fact from fiction. If I were involved with the cattle industry, I would look for a more predictable and socially redeeming career. And, if I were a meat eater, I would try out some of the great new meatless food products that are widely available today.

Mathew Alschuler,

West Town

Why help lawbreakers?

According to the newest dictionary I could find, illegal is still an adjective meaning not legal, contrary to law and criminal. But it seems Gov. Blagojevich has a different definition source. He has just signed a bill giving ''any illegal immigrant who has attended an Illinois high school for at least three years and graduated'' (at taxpayers' expense), access to lower in-state tuition costs for schools of higher learning [''Guv vows veto on video poker,'' news story, May 19].

My question for the governor is why, instead of handing over to them cheaper tuition rates, aren't you handing them over to the immigration office?

We recently got rid of a governor who is a crook. Now we have one who, by offering financial subsidies to these students while they are in this country illegally, is aiding and abetting crooks. Funny game, this politics.

Jim Kemp, Channahon

No pity for businesses

Doug Whitley's May 19 Featured Letter was full of self-serving ''crocodile tears'' for how bad Illinois business is being treated, that business pays 48.3 percent of state and local taxes. But that means that us poor schmucks are paying 51.7 percent.

The state doesn't offer us millions of dollars in tax cuts to stay in Illinois, or to invest our hard-earned money in Illinois. Nor do we get big bonuses and stock options, like CEOs do just to keep them from leaving a company. No, we're just trying to keep our jobs because the CEOs find it easier to lay off workers to help fund their high pay and perks. Rarely are workers considered stakeholders in companies--just cost factors. So even when these companies get special treatment from the state, they have no qualms about closing up shop and moving to Mexico or Singapore ''because the business climate is better.'' They just take the money and run. I guess a country with no environmental laws to prohibit pollution, no safety laws to protect workers, and millions of people who will work for $5 a day is a ''better business climate.'' But the world deserves better.

Jeffrey Crowell,

Woodridge