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| Summoned: Parents in Prince George's County, Md., were ordered to appear at a court hearing Saturday to prove their child
was in compliance with immunization requirements. Andy Nelson – staff |
One Maryland county takes tough tack on vaccinations
In one of the strongest stands in the US, Prince George's County, Md., orders parents to immunize their children or risk up to 10 days in jail.
By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the November 19, 2007 edition
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UPPER MARLBORO, MD. - For the parents that converged on a courthouse in Prince George's County, Md., on Saturday morning, the choice seemed clear: Vaccinate your kids or go to jail.
In fact, there are exemptions for medical or religious reasons in the state of Maryland. But few parents standing in lines that stretched down the sidewalk outside the county courthouse said they were aware of them.
Flanked by protesters and television crews, parents said they just wanted to sort out immunizations, so their kids could go back to school – and they could avoid penalties of up to 10 days in jail and $50 a day in fines.
"I've got too many children to raise to go to jail," says Remy Durham, who cares for her nephew, Lamonte Hyter, along with seven other children.
All states require that children be immunized from some childhood diseases, but the crackdown in Prince George's County has attracted international attention.
"We've had calls and e-mail from all over the country, especially the Midwest, as well as England, Germany, and Poland," says Glenn Ivey, state's attorney in Prince George's County, in a phone interview.
A lot of the uproar over the county's new approach to this issue was fueled by misinformation, he said – especially websites that said "we were going to start arresting people." One critic "called me a jackbooted representative of a United Nations, international pharmaceutical conspiracy," he says.
In fact, no decision has been made yet on what steps to take next, and it was never intended to scare people, he says. He's boiled his answer to critics down to one line: "It's about getting kids back in school, not to put parents in jail," he said.
By the start of the 2007 school year, more than 2,800 children in Prince George's County were not in compliance with state mandates on immunizations. The school board asked the courts to help by setting up a date for parents to either have their children vaccinated on site or provide evidence that they were in compliance with the law.
"This seemed like a great idea. We did not order people to do anything. We invited them to the court house to talk about it," said Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols in a phone interview.
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