11th case of measles confirmed in B.C. as debate on mandatory vaccinations continues

WATCH ABOVE: Nienke Van Houten, a lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, talks to Global News’ BC1’s Sonia Sunger about the topic of mandatory vaccinations.

VANCOUVER – An 11th case of measles has been reported in Metro Vancouver.

Vancouver Coastal Health confirmed the new case on Friday. All positive cases are people who were either on the original March 21st Air China Flight CA991, or were in contact with someone who had been on that flight.

Today an immunization clinic is being held at Port Coquitlam’s Terry Fox Secondary after it was confirmed a student has measles. Health officials say it is linked to the same Air China flight.

Fraser Health says the student went to class while infected. An immunization clinic is open until 3 p.m. today.

Measles were also on board another Air China flight that arrived in Vancouver on April 4.

With more cases in Metro Vancouver, many are wondering if mandatory vaccinations are in order. It’s a debate that is happening now in California as the legislature looks over a proposed bill.

Nienke Van Houten, a lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, says the topic of mandatory vaccinations is a very complex one. “Questions as to how these regulations are enforced,” she said. “For example, you could have a fine, you could have imprisonment in the extreme cases, it may be as simple as withholding children from school, which of course might infringe on a child’s right to education. Fines are regressive so it would impact a lot of lower income families.”

The proposed bill in California would possibly take away a parent’s right to opt out of vaccines for religious or other reasons.

“Parental autonomy is important,” said Van Houten, “but it’s also really important to have a specific level of community immunity within a population so that we can prevent the spread of these infectious diseases.”

She added that there are other ways of approaching the issue of mandatory vaccinations.

“People opt out of vaccines for a number of different reasons,” she said.

“I think there’s also other approaches we can use to broadly incentivize people to vaccinate. So one issue with vaccine compliance is this sometimes happens in small religious communities where people are homeschooling kids as well, so in those cases, if they’re not entering into the school system they still have the ability to not be part of the vaccination program so that still leaves open a pocket of potential susceptible people.”