Unvaccinated Oregon Boy Nearly Died Of Tetanus, CDC Says

A 6-year-old Oregon boy who didn’t get his childhood vaccinations nearly died of tetanus, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. A simple vaccination could have prevented his suffering, but his parents are part of a growing group of Americans who aren’t getting vaccinations for easily preventable diseases — for a variety of reasons.

The case report, released Friday, detailed the 2017 event that was Oregon’s first pediatric case of tetanus in more than 30 years. The report said the boy got a cut on his forehead while playing outdoors at his family’s farm. They cleaned and sutured the wound at home.

But six days later, “he had episodes of crying, jaw clenching, and involuntary upper extremity muscle spasms, followed by arching of the neck and back (opisthotonus) and generalized spasticity.”

When he had difficulty breathing, his parents called first responders, and he was airlifted to a pediatric medical center, where he was diagnosed with tetanus — commonly called lockjaw — and given the DTaP vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (whooping cough), which have been all but wiped out as part of the nation's vaccine program.

By the time the boy reached the hospital, he was unable to open his mouth and was placed on ventilation for 43 days because he couldn’t breathe on his own.

His condition deteriorated in the intensive care unit, where he remained for 47 days. A tracheostomy was performed on the fifth day of his hospitalization, the report said. Hs temperature shot up as high as 140.9 degrees Fahrenheit, and he was given medications to control his pain, blood pressure and muscle spasms.

He was hospitalized for eight weeks at a cost of $811,929, including air transportation, inpatient rehabilitation and follow-up care, according to the report. Within a month of completing his inpatient rehabilitation, “he returned to all normal activities, including running and bicycling.”

Despite an extensive review of the risks and benefits of tetanus vaccination, “the family declined the second dose of DTaP and any other recommended immunizations,” the CDC said. A five-dose DTaP series is recommended. Booster doses for diphtheria and tetanus are recommended every 10 years throughout life.

Growing Group Of Anti-Vaxxers

The report didn’t say why the boy’s parents chose not to vaccinate their son, but a growing group of Americans known as “anti-vaxxers” cite a widely discredited belief that vaccines cause autism. The World Health Organization said vaccine hesitancy is one of the top 10 global health threats of 2019. Routine vaccination prevents 2-3 million deaths a year, and 1.5 million more could be prevented, according to the agency.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the departing commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, told CNN that if states don’t require more school children to get vaccinated as a condition of enrollment, the federal government may have to step in.

Nearly all states allow vaccination exemptions of some sort. All states allow exemptions for medical reasons and most allow religious exemptions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but a growing number are granting philosophical exemptions.

“Some states are engaging in such wide exemptions that they're creating the opportunity for outbreaks on a scale that is going to have national implications,” Gottlieb told CNN last month.

The exemptions are particularly popular in Washington State, where an outbreak of measles spread to four states and has sickened at least 67 people. A measles outbreak in New York began in October and has sickened more than 200 people.

Immunization programs in the United States have been successful in all but eliminating childhood diseases measles and polio.

But anti-vaxxers aren’t the only ones who aren’t getting their children vaccinated. As many as 2.1 million Americans aren’t getting timely vaccinations. Vaccinate Your Family: The Next Generation of Every Child by Two, a nonprofit foundation co-founded by former first lady Rosalyn Carter, estimates that as many as 2.1 million U.S. children aren’t getting timely vaccinations or access to new vaccines.

They’re primarily the working poor — people who make too much money to qualify for federally funded vaccinations, but whose health insurance doesn’t cover them, according to ABC News.

“All these vaccines are being recommended but with hardly any funding whatsoever,” Every Child By Two’s executive director, Amy Pisani, told the network. “I foresee outbreaks.”

The nation’s vaccine program has been “remarkably successful,” Dr. Joseph Bocchini, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases and chief of pediatric infectious disease at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, told ABC.

“There has been a significant reduction in cases, as high as 99 percent in some diseases,” he said.