Most Children Adopted From Countries Outside US Lack
Vaccination Records
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Feb 15 - The majority of children
adopted from other countries by US parents do not have written records of
immunizations. However, for those children who do have records, most are
up-to-date and the children have had vaccine doses that meet US standards,
researchers report in the electronic edition of Pediatrics for February.
"Increasingly pediatricians are seeing children who are adopted from
overseas...So this is an issue that pediatricians are going to have to deal
with," Dr. Joann M. Schulte, from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, Atlanta, told Reuters Health.
In a retrospective analysis, Dr. Schulte and colleagues studied the medical
records of 504 children who had been adopted from outside the US between 1997
and 1998.
The children came from 16 countries. Most were from Russia (31%) and China
(48%). The majority of children (65%) had no written immunization records.
Among the 35% of children with records most (92%) had received at least one
vaccine dose that complied with standards set by the Advisory Committee on
Immunization Practices. For 67% of these children, vaccinations were up-to-date
for one or more vaccine series in the US schedule, investigators found.
"If there is any question as to whether vaccines were administered or
were immunogenic, repeating immunizations is a recommended and acceptable
option," they conclude.
Limited data are available to determine the most cost-effective approach to
ensuring complete vaccination, while avoiding unnecessary immunization among
children adopted from overseas, Dr. Schulte and colleagues add.
They suggest that "future research efforts should focus on the
development and evaluation of rapid and effective 'point of care' antibody
assays with the ability to provide immediate results regarding immune status to
vaccine-preventable diseases."
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Reuters Health Information 2002. © 2002 Reuters Ltd
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