Vineyard elementary schools have some of the lowest vaccination rates in the state, according to a list of vaccination rates released by the state Department of Public Health. The West Tisbury and Tisbury schools are among the lowest.
His family members and friends got inoculated at their doctors or druggists. But James Paul, 65, got his shot at the West Tisbury school, without so much as leaving his car.
Fueled by a federal grant aimed at countering a bioterrorist attack, scientists at a Providence, R.I., pharmaceutical company are banking on the collection of blood samples from nearly two dozen Vineyarders to help them develop a new vaccine against tularemia, the rare disease with an unexplained presence on Martha's Vineyard.
The number of kindergartners who are not fully immunized was above the state average in three of the five Vineyard towns with elementary schools last year, a fact which worries Island doctors who see the choice of parents to not immunize their child against illnesses such as mumps, measles and rubella as a threat not only to the health of that child but the school community at large.
Because shipments of seasonal influenza vaccine will arrive on the Vineyard later than expected, the annual Islandwide innoculation will be postponed until the second week of November.
Seasonal flu innoculation is now scheduled to take place at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School on Nov. 11.
