ADVERTISEMENT

WINNIPEG (CP) — Manitoba health officials have been meeting with parents who believe their children were damaged by childhood immunizations with the aim of having a vaccination protocol on the books by as early as next year.

Health Minister Dave Chomiak said officials from his department have met with the Association for Vaccine-Damaged Children.

“We’re working on some of the recommendations from the vaccine-damaged report from the (Manitoba) Law Reform Commission.”

In 2000, the Law Reform Commission released a 90-page report recommending the province compensate parents whose children suffered adverse health affects as a result of vaccinations administered when they were babies.

Gloria Dignazio was one of several parents who met with government officials last week.

“We were advised they were going to be introducing legislation in the fall session to get this going,” said Dignazio, whose daughter, Sara, suffered post-vaccinal encephalitis, or brain swelling, as a result of childhood shots.

Chomiak did not say which of the report’s recommendations would be implemented.

Childhood vaccinations have come under fire in recent weeks following a $1-billion class action lawsuit filed against the makers of thimerasol, an ethyl-mercury derivative used to preserve diptheria-pertussis-tetanus and hepatitis B vaccines in the early and mid-90s.

The lawsuit claims thimerasol causes severe neurological disorders in children, such as autism.

Chomiak said thimerasol has since been eliminated from most childhood vaccines, except the hepatitis B shot, which is not compulsory.

He said a thimerasol-free hepatitis B vaccine is currently being evaluated.