Preventable diseases like measles may soon rise among young Mississippians after a federal judge forced the State to allow religious exemptions for required vaccinations for children starting school, State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney is warning.
“We were leading the nation with the highest rate of vaccination for our school-aged children and because of that, we haven’t seen measles in 40 years. We haven’t had an outbreak of (preventable childhood illnesses) in a very long time,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 6. “And our children have been safe. And our population has not been suffering from these preventable illnesses that can kill our children.”
The Mississippi State Health Department says children must receive vaccines for diptheria, tetanus and pertussis; polio; hepatitis; measles, mumps and rubella; and chickenpox before starting school for the first time. Children must get a pertussis booster shot before entering the seventh grade.
Mississippi parents have been able to request religious exemptions from receiving childhood vaccinations for children starting school since July 15, 2023. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi Judge Sul Ozerden, an appointee of former Republican President George W. Bush, ordered the State to do so in April in the case Bosarge v. Edney.
Before the ruling, the state was one of five that did not have religious exemptions for childhood vaccines. While other states that allowed exemptions saw a rise in preventable diseases like measles over the past decade, Mississippi has not identified a measles case that originated in the state since 1992. But anti-vaccine activists have fought for years to undo Mississippi’s strict childhood vaccine requirements, which allowed exemptions only for medical reasons. Those efforts ramped up following the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, even though COVID-19 vaccines are not part of the required childhood vaccine regimen, culminating in the April ruling.
‘We Disagreed With The Attorney General’
On Sept. 25, the Mississippi Free Press asked Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s communications director Debbee Hancock if Fitch would appeal the vaccine ruling, but the spokesperson said the attorney general does “not oppose the motion,” as shown in
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