Message to Marlborough District Health Board: Wake up, and start thinking straight. Start by taking your heads out of the pavement which you've embedded it into - apart from one of your members:
If, you, suggest that those who chose not to vaccinate, should pay for any epidemic in their community, are you being consistent?. Do you see the practical implications of consistently implementing what you say? After all, every year, parents who chose to bottlefeed have their rotavirus-infected babies admitted to your hospital. Yet, if they had breastfed, their baby would never have got rotavirus infections in the first place, so these parents are authors of their own misfortune, are they not?
And before someone jumps on me with the old hoary that "some mothers can't breastfeed,..." why is it that PERU and other under-developed countries have a health profession that commits itself to country wide, state funded, breast milk banks? There, if you can't breastfeed, a doctor can refer you straight to a breast-milk bank. What happens here? Apart from parent driven private initiatives, what is there?
We live in a country where medical people give lip-service to breastmilk, but instead of actively pursuing and advocating breastmilk banks for the few mothers who can't breastfeed ... there is NOT... ONE... breastmilk bank.. What gives? Did Fonterra shove some money under the medical system's doors? If not, why the silence? Apathy? Or does the medical profession really believe that formula is "good enough"? If so, that's truly an attitudinal indictment in the face of one tonne of medical articles to the contrary.
Breastfeeding prevents Streptococcal Pneumoniae pneumonai and meningitis (Prevnar) and, in fact, --- all the meningitis types. There are many diseases and chronic health disorders, which could be prevented both short and long term, by breastfeeding, good nutrition and appropriate amounts of vitamin D. The health cost to the taxpayer, of parents who CHOSE not to breastfeed is huge, so why aren't they paying up?
Margarine and foods with transfats are implicated in allergies and asthma, yet many in the health profession have this utterly misguided fanaticism about "margarine" and low fat, being "healthy." Bollocks. It's also a fact that much of the ludicrous "advice" from today's medical "experts", lies directly behind vitamin D deficiencies and other health issues, which with old fashioned commonsense, shouldn't exist.
Thank you to Judy Crowe of Marlborough District Health Board for recognising that if you're going to penalise one group for refusing to allow you to stick needles in their children, then consistency requires you to also charge quite a few of the vaccinated people who smoke, who line the halls of your hospitals - who are REALLY the author of their own misfortune. Your net however, doesn't cast widely enough.
It's also ironic, that most parents who CHOOSE not to vaccinate, "parent" their children very well. They extend breastfeed. They often don't go out to work, sacrificing a second income, because they value their roles as mothers bringing up health children, who will form the backbone of tomorrow's taxpayers... paying sickness benefits for some children, whose parents chose to vaccinate, follow your "advice", and do nothing else.
Most parents who choose not to vaccinate, know what to do when their children get an infection, so you RARELY see their children in your hospital. They rarely have fat children.
Usually, parents who choose not to vaccinate, have a much more accurate picture as to what "real health" is about. Usually parents who choose not to vaccinate, reject the sort of unthinking "in loco parentis" dictatorialism of the majority of Marlborough District Health Board - whose attitudes are exemplified by this statement:
Board member John Moore of Nelson said ..... "No matter how hard we flog ourselves we can't make people do things they don't want to do, but we are trying," he said.
Sticking needles into people's children is EASY.
Sticking needles into people's children is cheap.
Sticking needles into people's children, doesn't require treading on people's toes, to deal with the huge issues coming up, like diabetes, which will make the problems associated with non vaccination look like chicken-feed.
Sticking needles into people's children only makes you look like you're an interfering busy-body to those who refuse to conform to your idea of choice.
You can stick a needle into someone, and you feel like "a good guy" even if that needle causes that baby or child irreversible health problems, which you will then dismiss as "coincidence effect".
Sticking needles into people's kids will NEVER address the really serious fundamental issues (like diabetes)which are the bottom line for both short and long term health of New Zealand citizens, so try showing some equally impressive zealotry into the areas which the majority of the vaccinated families in this country, still need to address, and leave the minority who actually know what they are doing, alone, to get on with it.
LONG TERM, when you look at your total health budget from tax payer's funds, the people who chose not to vaccinate use the LEAST of the taxpayer's resources.
If everyone who was the author of their own, or someone else's misery, was charged, it would still be the provaccine majority who would be paying far far more into your coffers than any of the people who chose not to vaccinate BECAUSE --- most of those who chose not to vaccinate, know what they are doing.
The majority of people who DO vaccinate, do so, because they believe that only vaccines will prevent the maiming and death of their children and that there is no alternative to their learned helplessness ..,. and that is directly YOUR doing.
Not vaccinating is a lifestyle, based on total family responsibility, whereby most parents make a commitment to doing the very things which you should be putting most of your advocating energy into, but aren't.
YES.... there will always bad apples in every barrel, and some people don't vaccinate, because some of their friends don't. Some people don't appear to understand the total commitment which comes from a decision to not vaccinate.
So its also time for those who chose not to vaccinate, and who understand that "commitment", to take in hand the others who are a "disaster waiting to happen", and point out to them "the stakes" at hand here, not just to their own children and themselves, but to the rest of those who make considered and knowledgable choices.
As a movement, we need to continue to defend our right to make informed choices, and continue to build networks or properly informed communities which can swing into action to make sure that any disease outbreaks are "managed" properly - our way. Not the "way" of any Health Board committee which doesn't appear to see the real wood from the conformed forest.
