Vaccination exemptions on the rise in certain Texas counties Many are opting out due to reasons of conscience but medical officials say that this is doing more harm than good

Vaccination exemptions on the rise across the state of Texas

Click through to see which Texas school districts have the highest number of students whose parents have exempted them from receiving vaccinations. Vaccination exemptions on the rise across the state of Texas

Click through to see which Texas school districts have the highest number of students whose parents have exempted them from receiving vaccinations. Photo: Jamie Grill/Getty Images/Tetra Images RF Photo: Jamie Grill/Getty Images/Tetra Images RF Image 1 of / 39 Caption Close Vaccination exemptions on the rise in certain Texas counties 1 / 39 Back to Gallery

Click through the slideshow above to see which Texas school districts have the highest percentage of vaccination exemptions

This week the Houston Chronicle reported on the increasing number of children who attend public and private schools in Texas whose parents are opting for them to be exempt from taking basic vaccinations.

Many are opting out due to reasons of conscience but leading medical officials argue that this is doing more harm than good.

According to Sunday’s report some 45,000 Texas school children were not vaccinated due to a “conscientious exemption” due to personal beliefs.

RELATED: More Texas parents nixing children's vaccines before school

This number was just 3,000 in 2003. That was the first year the state of Texas began allowing parents to exempt their children from the vaccines.

When one considers that there are 5.5 million children enrolled in Texas schools, the number of exempted children may not seem so eye-popping but Texas' vaccination rate among preschool-aged children, 19-35 months, now ranks 48th in the nation.

The Austin Independent School District leads the state in the number of children who have vaccination exemptions with 1,582.

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Frisco Independent School District, in Collin County has some 1,077 children who have also received an exemption. Other Collin County districts with many exemptions include Plano, McKinney and Allen.

In the Harris County area the districts with the most exemptions include Houston, Cypress-Fairbanks, Katy, Klein, and Humble.

Those who speak out against vaccine exemptions say the practice will lead to the increased incidence of childhood illnesses such as measles and whooping cough, which may seem like relics of decades past.

RELATED: Dose of reality needed for vaccine waivers

Meanwhile parents who are against vaccinations say they are simply doing what they think is best for their children. The common argument is that the shots – up to 11 of them just to attend school – can be harmful to a developing body. Some discredited theories say that autism and vaccines are linked.

Looking at the data from the Texas Department of State Health Services it appears that the schools with the highest percentages of vaccination exemptions are predominantly private, independent schools with a faith-based curriculum or those that offer non-mainstream teaching, like Waldorf schools.

According to the data just over 40 percent of students at the Austin Waldorf School received vaccination exemptions. Just over 37 percent of students at the Regents Academy in Nacogdoches – a classical Christian school – have not been vaccinated.

Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, told the Houston Chronicle that parents are playing with fire by not getting their children vaccinated.

Other children who come into contact with unvaccinated kids could also be at risk.

"The bottom line that is that children in the state of Texas are now at great risk for measles and other killer childhood infections," Hotez said. "This is happening because parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids and are doing so because of erroneous beliefs."