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Education has an important role to play in overcoming vaccine hesitancy
Vaccine hesitancy and outright denial are growing trends among younger generations. (Pexels photo)
Insufficient funding for public health has been a key factor leading to a steady decline in vaccine coverage across Ontario since the Progressive Conservatives took power almost seven years ago.
Along with a growing anti-vaccination movement driven by a surge in misinformation, this has left adults and children vulnerable to recent outbreaks of pertussis, measles and avoidable strains of seasonal influenza.
Further outbreaks could impair a health-care system already stretched to its limits.
The Ontario Conservatives, who recently won another majority mandate, would be wise to bring in corrective measures.
One effective step would be to increase the spread of science-based information. It’s essential that children and young adults be educated on the dangers of infectious diseases and the benefits, as well as possible side-effects, of immunization.
Measles on the march
Ontario recorded its first measles-related death in decades in February 2024 and the outbreak continues to grow in 2025. The number of cases this year surpasses the total recorded between 2013 and 2023.
Routine childhood immunizations include measles. The MMR vaccine is highly effective and offers up to 99-per-cent protection after two doses. Neither the measles virus nor the vaccine formula have changed much over the past seven years. What has shifted is the vaccination rate among children.
Public Health Ontario reports that 86.6 per cent of all seven-year-olds in the province were immunized when Ford’s Conservatives took power in 2018.
But the government’s short-sighted public health strategies, coupled with misinformation and hesitancy, drove that figure to a low of 65.5 per cent. It stood at 70.4 per cent when the outbreak began last year.
The 2024 whooping cough outbreak is yet another blemish on the provincial government’s public health record. Pertussis vaccination rates in 2018 reached a high of 85.7, but at one point in 2024 fell to 63 per cent.
Annual whooping cough numbers that previously ranged from 200 to 700 leapt to more than 1,600 probable and confirmed cases last year.
Vaccine hesitancy and outright denial are growing trends among younger generations.
A 2021 study in the United States reported that 58 per cent of 12- to 15-year olds surveyed were reluctant or refused to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
A similar study in the United Kingdom showed a hesitancy or refusal rate of about 50 per cent among children nine to 18 years old.
These findings may not perfectly represent every disease, but they highlight a potentially alarming future in which a significant segment of the population could reject life-saving vaccines during a pandemic.
This is why it’s critical that the Ontario government should update the education curriculum to teach children about infectious diseases and vaccination. Equipping younger generations with the facts helps them make more informed health-care decisions, particularly regarding vaccinations.
Canadians have been largely protected from vaccine-preventable illnesses because we live in a developed nation with a temperate climate and robust health-care system.
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But the availability of global travel means pathogens (bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites) from distant regions can reach Canada with ease. Climate change further compounds the spread. For instance, Lyme disease and the West Nile virus – once rare in this country – are becoming more common.
It will be too late if we delay raising awareness until the combined effects of globalization, climate change and vaccine hesitancy result in widespread infections. Early education is the more sensible approach.
Personal experience bolsters science information
Growing up in Vietnam gave me first-hand insight into the dangers of infectious diseases.
I saw my cousins isolated while they fought measles. Some of my school friends caught chickenpox and their scars stayed with them long afterward. I knew someone who became infertile following a mumps infection and I lost an uncle to tuberculosis.
In our health education classes, we learned to avoid rats because their fleas can transmit bubonic plague. We were also taught about cholera and how to add extra salt to rice congee (porridge) as a makeshift oral solution to prevent severe dehydration.
During my first year at Berkeley University in California, I enrolled in a course on plagues and pandemics. I was struck by how many classmates – most of whom had never left the United States – were astonished by how severe and lethal infectious diseases can be.
Later, on a trip to Nicaragua, I realized how much I took for granted, such as knowing that tap water can harbour micro-organisms that can cause intestinal illnesses or that sleeping under nets helps prevent mosquito-borne illnesses.
These were facts unfamiliar to my peers who were travelling outside the U.S. for the first time. Infectious diseases seldom factor into daily life for most people in developed nations. This leads to a lack of understanding about their severity and undermines the perceived importance of vaccinations.
It comes back to education
But that can be changed. The Ontario government and others should enact legislation to include infectious disease education in elementary and secondary health and physical education curricula.
Younger students should be taught what pathogens are and how they affect the human body. Topics for older students should include the impact of these illnesses, the death and suffering that they can cause, how vaccinations work and the management of potential side effects.
Granted, this proposal would have a minimal impact on the current vaccine hesitancy crisis and disease outbreaks.
Cracking down on frivolous vaccine exemptions, mandating quarantines after exposure and barring unvaccinated individuals from high-risk public spaces, such as long-term care facilities and playgrounds, would more effectively curb the spread of infectious diseases and mitigate potential epidemics.
However, an educational approach would likely be more palatable to the current Ontario government and voters who opposed COVID-19 vaccination requirements.
In an era of rampant misinformation, the government has a responsibility to provide access to science-based information that allows citizens to make informed decisions.
Education now would foster a well-informed generation capable of making prudent immunization decisions based on awareness of disease risks and the potential side-effects of vaccines.
All members of Ontario’s provincial parliament — no matter what their party — should set aside partisan divisions and unite behind such an important public health measure.
This article first appeared on Policy Options and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
