The Effect of Childhood Vaccine Exemptions on Disease Outbreaks
▻http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/report/2013/11/14/76471/the-effect-of-childhood-vaccine-exemptions-on-disease-outbreaks
Sur l’augmentation des exemptions pour raisons non médicales (et les conséquences)
Although all state school immunization laws grant medical exemptions for children who are susceptible to adverse effects from vaccination, states have different policies regarding nonmedical exemptions. Every state except Mississippi and West Virginia grants some kind of religious exemption, while 17 states allow for“personal belief ” or philosophical exemptions. In addition, the administrative procedures for obtaining nonmedical exemptions are much more lenient in some states than in others. Some states require that parents renew their exemption annually, obtain a signature from a local health department official, notarize their exemption form, or write a personal letter explaining their reasons for refusing vaccination. In other states, however, it is much easier to procure an exemption. In Maryland, for example, as of 2006, parents could obtain a religious exemption simply by signing and submitting a prewritten form. According to one study, in 23 states, school officials were not even authorized to deny exemption requests if the requests fulfilled state requirements.
In practice—because much of the responsibility for enforcing exemption laws falls on school officials—there are additional within-state variations in the types of exemptions granted and the processes for approving exemptions. For example, one study found that even in Massachusetts and Missouri, two states that do not allow for personal-belief exemptions, 18.1 percent and 17.0 percent of schools, respectively, permitted personal-belief exemptions anyway. Administrative procedures can also vary within states. Michigan, for example, has no standard statewide process for granting exemptions. Even among states that do have statewide exemption procedures, there is significant variation in how those policies are enforced at the school level.