By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHnurse hospital art 88(photo credit: )
The curtailment of state funds for well-baby (tipat halav) clinics has reduced the quality of their services and reputations and even aroused accusations that Israel has unintentionally "exported" measles to the US because vaccination rates have declined.
These were the charges levelled by Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, director of the Israel Council for the Child, in a letter to Health Minister Ya'acov Ben-Yizri.
Many countries do not allow unvaccinated children to be admitted to study in schools, said Kadman, but in Israel there is no such restriction. The lack of nurses for vaccinations and the need for organizational changes in public health, along with the new "fashion" of keeping children away from tipat halav clinics, will bring about a continuing decline in the health of Israel's children, the child welfare watchdog said. Kadman called on the government to immediately add NIS 120 million to increase manpower and other needs in the country's well-baby clinics.
Kadman, a social worker, said that for decades Israel's well-baby clinics had a sterling reputation that was admired around the world. As a result, infectious children's diseases were almost wiped out. The public, and parents in particular, recognized the importance of taking children for their vaccinations.
Kadman declared that a few years ago, it would have been "unthinkable" that Israel would be "accused" - as it was recently in an article published in the US - of being a "source of measles" that could endanger other countries.
But in recent years, more parents refuse to take their children for the full schedule of vaccinations. Last year alone, there were 1,000 cases of measles, mostly in the haredi community, compared to 131 cases in the US, which has more than 40 times Israel's population.
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