Chickenpox: Mom furious after school sends son home

A Birmingham mother is furious after her sixth-grade son was sent home from class today because he's not fully vaccinated against chickenpox.

One of Michael Donovan's classmates is among three students in Birmingham Public Schools who is infected.

"I wasn't vaccinated, and I don't think it's fair that I can't go to school," Michael, 11, said after his mother, Sarah, was called to the school to pick him up.

Leaving the school, she said she was "beyond not happy," referring to a district spokeswoman's comment earlier this week that some parents were not happy with the decision to exclude unvaccinated children from schools with confirmed chickenpox cases. Neither school officials nor health officials would say whether those students had been vaccinated, citing privacy concerns.

Chickenpox cases have fallen in recent years both nationally and statewide, driven in part by vaccinations that have become mandatory for school attendance, officials said.

The disease, spread by the virus varicella, is usually not deadly but can be painful for several days. It can also cause serious complications, including skin infection, dehydration, pneumonia, and swelling of the brain, according to U.S. Centers of Disease Control & Prevention.

Before the vaccine was available, about 4 million people got chickenpox each year in the U.S. with more than 10,000 hospitalizations. About 100 to 150 died each year, according to the CDC.

Students in Michigan must have two doses of the varicella vaccine before starting school, unless their parents sign a waiver.

But the state has reported more than 100 cases since the beginning of the year, including about three dozen in southeast Michigan.

On Wednesday, Oakland County health officials and Birmingham Public Schools alerted parents about three confirmed cases of chickenpox in three schools in the district.

That day, they recommended parents of unvaccinated children keep those children at home until they were sure they had not been infected.

On Thursday, health officials grew more concerned after realizing that some unvaccinated students had "significant" contact with some of the infected students.

The school then told parents that unvaccinated children were not to return to school until April 14 — just after spring break and long enough that any new cases would have been detected.

Donovan said her two children were partially vaccinated, but she grew concerned when Michael's older sister, Jane, then a toddler, began exhibiting signs of autism.

She stressed that she's not against vaccinations but against requiring them.

Though health professionals and researchers have said links between autism and vaccines have been repeatedly discredited, Donovan and other parents believe the damaging side effects of vaccines are not fully known and often downplayed.

Donovan also says the policy violates federal privacy laws, because other children and parents know that children who are not at school during this period have not been vaccinated.

When school officials called Thursday, she said she told them that she would send Michael to school today, despite their directions.

And then she prepared her son.

"I told him that he might be called down to the office because of this," she said. "We explained to him that Mom and Dad love him very much and this is our choice because we feel this is protecting him by not being vaccinated."

But she said she's equally concerned that health officials are overreacting, exposing her son's personal health information and making him a target of other students' questions and teasing.

"I don't like this bullying. I'm going to push back somewhat. I'm not a media person — I'm not. I like privacy. But I think it's important for people to know the other side.

"It's not right. It's truly bullying. My son is being singled out and we're made to feel like were bad parents because we've decided not to vaccinate anymore."

Chickenpox, she noted, is usually not a serious disease. Only in rare cases does it have deadly complications.

"They're saying it's some deadly disease but, hello, we all had it," she said.

Shane Bies, administrator of public health nursing services for the county health department, said health officials order unvaccinated children not to attend class roughly every other year, though not always for chickenpox.

Bies also said health officials have learned that the Birmingham district has a higher-than-average waiver rate. Those few percentage points are particularly worrisome in highly contagious diseases such as chickenpox, he said, noting that serious complications do happen.

By the time kids enter kindergarten, 93 percent of Michigan children have received two doses of the varicella vaccine, according to Jennifer Smith, state public health spokeswoman.

In the Birmingham district, about 87.3% of kindergartners have had both shots, Bies said.

Contact Robin Erb : rerb@freepress.com or 313-222-2708. Follow her on Twitter @Freephealth.