A North Okanagan doctor is struggling to understand a recent unnerving trend in the health care field.
Michael Cooke is a pediatrician at the North Okanagan Pediatric Clinic. He is raising alarm bells on the low immunization rates in the Okanagan.
According to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, childhood immunization for children aged seven and up is at 65.6 per cent in the province as of 2023.
In the Okanagan, the number is even lower, with just 60 per cent immunized.
"It is like letting your kids walk in traffic," Cooke told The Morning Star. "It is not a busy street as the risks are infrequent, but catastrophic and 100 per cent preventable."
According to Health Canada, at least 95 per cent of the population needs to be immunized to develop herd immunity.
"It is amazing because I think that these vaccines are one of humanity's greatest achievements," he said. "But now, people are actively putting themselves in harm's way."
For over 20 years, Cooke has been a pediatrician. He has noticed a steady decline in immunization rates, but the COVID pandemic exacerbated the issues.
"Vaccine hesitancy has increased, and I am confused by it in some ways," Cooke explained. "Coming out of the pandemic, when billions of doses of vaccines were given to people, the wisdom was that the vaccine was safe and effective, but people seemed to get more hesitant, and it comes from a change in the way people get information."
"As a doctor, I don鈥檛 understand it. It doesn鈥檛 seem that anything you do makes a difference. For people set against vaccines, they are set in their ways and are not amenable."
As measles outbreaks have been reported in Alberta and Quebec recently, the Okanagan sports one the lowest vaccination rates in the country, at 64.7 per cent.
"The biggest danger with measles is that it can kill you," said Cooke. "It is so contagious, as it lingers in the air and up to nine of 10 people nearby will become infected if they are not protected."
The solution is simple, according to Cooke.
"Get the vaccine, people do not know the risks because we have been successful in vaccinating against diseases like measles, tetanus and meningitis for so long. I could compare this to wildfires. What do you do to prevent it? You take away the fuel, but the unvaccinated people keep adding timber to the fire."
Cooke added that there won't be a lot of people dying from these diseases, but any death from them is 100 per cent preventable.
"I have three kids, I vaccinated them, but if one of my kids died from measles, I would be choked. I did all I could, and the fact that someone else put my kid at risk by not being vaccinated is hard."
A vaccine essentially gives one's immune system a head start, and gets it ready to fight to avoid things "you don't even think about avoiding," said Cooke.
"Why are you putting your kids in danger by not vaccinating them? What you are doing is increasing the odds of a bad thing happening."
Cooke has had several interactions with young mothers, who feel like they are doing a "terrible" job at raising their kids because they do not abide by certain social media trends.
"They do a phenomenal job, but are so influenced by what is on TikTok for example, so it is extremely hard," said Cooke. "If you do your own research and the research says that vaccines are bad, then you are a terrible researcher."
He stressed that the majority of parents are vaccinating their children, but the numbers are "lower than they should be."
"My colleague, who does Doctors Without Borders, sees people walk 20 miles to get vaccinated because they have children dying of tetanus. The parents there would have loved to have the vaccine, but we in the Okanagan are saying, 'no, I鈥檓 good, I live healthy.'
"I would strongly encourage someone who is on the fence to contact their public health agency, as they are so great," he added. "We are not here to make money from this, we just want to help the kids."
