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| Uganda to jail parents over missed vaccinations |
Uganda passed a new law
this month targeting parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
RT
News report continues:
“Anti-vaxxers” could face up to six
months in prison in the central African nation of Uganda after claims by the
Health Minister and others that a growing religious “cult” is preventing
parents from having their children immunized.
The
new law was signed by President Yoweri Museveni on March 10, but it wasn’t
announced until this week.
The
Immunization Act would require parents to have their children get shots for
diseases such as measles, polio, tuberculosis and meningitis – or face jail
time.
Children
would also be denied education as it requires them to possess an immunization
card to attend school.
The
'anti-vaxxer' organization known as the 666 has been hiding children in slums
to prevent them from receiving shots, Health Minister Sarah Achieng Opendi told
the BBC.
"It
started in a few districts in eastern Uganda, but now it has spread and now we
are seeing it all over the country," she said.
666
members were arrested in 2014 after discouraging followers from participating
in a national identity card registration. Local media claims the 666 are
unwilling to participate in anything to do with numbers and also prohibit
visiting hospitals to receive medical treatment.
There
was an estimated 10,000 members of the 666 in Uganda in 2014. Previously no law
was in place that would allow for their arrest if found to be preventing
children from being vaccinated.
Opendi
claims 3 percent of the country’s children have not had the required
immunizations, including for polio and meningitis.
About
3 million children under the age of five years old die each year in the African
region, with a considerable number of those deaths preventable by vaccine,
according to the World Health Organization.
Western
countries, including the US, have seen a rapid rise in the anti-vaxxer
movement, particularly among affluent white parents and celebrities
like Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, and Donald Trump.
In
California, the rate of “vaccine refusal” doubled from 2007 to 2013 to 3.06
percent, with 5.43 percent exempt in private schools compared to 2.88 percent
in public, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
Fears
link the vaccines to autism and other side effects, including a resurgence in
the disease they supposedly prevent and paralysis.
They
cite patients in India who had previously been given a polio vaccination.
Last
week, Robert De Niro defended the screening of an anti-vaxxer documentary at
the Tribeca Film Festival.
“Vaxxed:
From Cover-Up to Catastrophe” by activist Andrew Wakefield is based on his own
research which was published in a British medical journal in 1998 before being
retracted in 2010.
The
film explores the link between vaccination and autism.
De
Niro defended his decision to screen the film at the festival he helped create
in a statement.
He
asked personally for the film to be screened as he has an autistic child and
wants “all of the issues surrounding the causes of autism to be openly
discussed and examined,” but added that he was not personally endorsing the
film.
The
parents of Ezekiel Stephan are currently on trial in Canada after he died from
meningitis.
They are charged with
failing to provide the 19-month-old with the necessities of life. Instead of
medical treatment, the toddler was given home and herbal treatments, including
smoothies and apple cider vinegar.
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