In the wake of news that more than 5,000 elementary school kids have been suspended for outdated immunization records this school year, parents have come forward with stories of misplaced vaccination cards and broken lines of communication involving doctors, Toronto public health and schools.

In April 2017, Carrie Young, a mother of two boys, received a letter informing her, her younger son, Liam, 16, had been suspended for having out-of-date immunization records.

As she was in the midst of a separation and was involved in moving her residence more than once, she did not receive the Toronto Parkdale school’s first few letters stating Liam was missing the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.

Young was certain Liam had all his vaccines. When she enrolled him in Grade 7 — he had been home-schooled before then — she had filed his vaccination card, complete with all the vaccinations needed to meet enrollment requirements.

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When her son was suspended, she found she had misplaced the yellow vaccination card, and couldn’t provide proof to the school.

“If you lose your passport, you have steps to get that passport,” said Young. “With vaccination cards, we’re talking about information that happened 10, 15 years (ago), and having no way to easily access that information.”

Her son’s school offered three courses of action: provide proof of vaccination; re-vaccinate her son, or submit an affidavit, a signed letter stating that she was choosing to exempt him from getting the vaccination for religious reasons.

Young didn’t want to revaccinate, because she knew her son didn’t need it. She was able to find a 15-year-old written document confirming he had all his vaccines from their old family doctor in North York, who had retired. (The building where his clinic was had been demolished.)

At one particular visit, when her son was around four years old, she had forgotten to bring his vaccination card to the doctor’s office. “They didn’t have a new one on hand, so a woman, a medical secretary, wrote all his vaccines down on a paper.”

She got a new vaccine card at her next visit. Somewhere along the way, as her family moved to Mississauga, Bloor West Village, the Junction, and then North York, the yellow card was misplaced.

“Part of the problem was, while we had a family doctor for much of his childhood, after we moved . . . we dropped the ball on getting a new family doctor,” said Young. “Some of the burden of responsibility is on our shoulders.”

When she called the new location of the old clinic, they never got back to her. Instead, she went to a doctor and got her son’s blood tested, which confirmed he had all the vaccines, including MMR, but the school didn’t accept that, she alleges.

Her son had to be revaccinated, and was back in school within the week.

At present, Toronto Public Health is assessing the vaccine records for students from 143 public high school students. Suspension for high school students will begin in the spring.

Dr. Fatima Kamalia, a Thornhill-based pediatrician, said that, in her 20 years of practicing pediatrics, immunization records have never gotten lost.

Those who lose their records “may need to get their vaccines again, which poses no harm,” she said. “But they need the information to be able to do this.”

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Young agrees. “I thought there had to be a central database,” she said. “I can’t be the only one who had lost the document . . . but I went through many rabbit holes and found nothing.”

Huda Idrees, CEO and Founder of DotHealth, an app that helps people access and track their health records, including their children’s immunization records, says this is a common problem for parents in the province.

“People don’t know how to find it,” said Idrees.

Many of her clients are parents who are managing their children’s records. Many say they have misplaced the info and needed a way to store it and share it with camps and schools.

“If you were born in Ontario and immunized within Ontario, Public Health should have your records,” said Idrees. “(The current system) doesn’t fully integrate with the rest of the system . . . . Whatever electronic system (the school is using) doesn’t integrate with Public Health’s database.

“The data is there; it’s not connected,” she said, stating that is why a company such as hers exists; it enables info to be shared between parents, schools and healthcare. “Imagine if schools could link to Toronto Public Health with parent’s permission; no one would get suspended.”

Lina Ismail, a mother of three based in Etobicoke and technology executive, calls the entire process “cumbersome.”

Ismail recalls how a doctor’s administrator manually transferred her daughter’s immunization records. “She had both pages open, and she was referencing a file against a yellow immunization card, checking them off one by one,” she said.

“The boxes are so small . . . . They could easily make a mistake,” said Ismail.

“For something as important as vaccinations, I can’t believe we’re still relying on a slip of paper,” said Young, who found the Toronto Public Health website “very confusing” throughout her experience.

“If I had realized what a headache this would have been, I would have put [the yellow card] in a gold box.”