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Vaccine hesitancy: East Texans talk importance of getting vaccinated

Following a World Health Organization report stating the anti-vaccine movement is a threat to global health, doctors and scientists are stressing the importance of vaccinations for families.

TYLER, Texas — A recent report from the World Health Organization claims the anti-vaccine movement is one of the top 10 threats to global health.

According to the report, diseases like the measles saw a 30 percent increase in cases globally, with countries that were close to eliminating the disease through vaccination seeing a resurgence.

There were eight reported cases of measles in Texas in 2018, as more than 57,000 Texans chose not to vaccinate their children.

CBS19 spoke with two East Texans about the controversial topic, both of whom say their lives were changed by a vaccine, or lack of one.

Jeff Johnson is a blogger/speaker who lives in Tyler and was diagnosed with throat cancer last year. He said doctors attributed the disease to the HPV virus he contracted decades ago, which has lain dormant. 

“It was originally thought to be a sexually transmitted virus,” Johnson said. “Now, they realize it’s a fluid-to-fluid transmitted virus, so it’s much easier to spread than they originally thought.”

 At the time Johnson contracted the virus, the HPV vaccine was not available.

“If there had been, it’s very likely that what I’ve gone through the last eight months, the throat cancer treatment and the recovery, that I would not have had to go through that experience,” Johnson explained. “I had seven chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments over the course of a two-month period. It’s not some experimental treatment, vaccines are a proven way of preventing diseases. Are they perfect, no, what medicine is?”

Adrian Hurst works in Equine Assisted Therapy for veterans and says she believes she got a bad vaccine 40 years ago. 

“I believe that the World Health Organization has it wrong as far as how often we need to have these shots,” Hurst said. “I’m not saying we don't need vaccines or we shouldn't have vaccines, I’m saying we need them safe. I would like to see them reformulated without the heavy metals and without Thimerosal. Have a candid conversation with your doctor.” 

 Dr. Monique Mills, a pediatrics specialist at UT Health East Texas, vaccinations prevent 3,000,000 deaths per year.

“If you go to any cemetery and you look back 50 to 150 years ago, the cemetery is full of children under the age of 2 and women of child-rearing age,” Dr. Mills explained. “It was pre-antibiotic, pre-vaccine and if you got the flu, you died.”

Dr. Mills says vaccine hesitancy is, in part, coming from young parents who actually have been immunized and whose parents were immunized.

“They have never seen measles, mumps, pertussis, they’ve never seen chicken pocks,” says Dr. Mills.

“We need to understand that these pathogens are naturally occurring and they can kill you and can kill your baby,” explains Dr. Mills. “Giving someone a vaccination allows the immune system to do what’s natural, which is confer immunity. The risk versus the benefit is far in the favor of the individual, community and worldwide benefit that vaccination has to offer people.”

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