When thousands of pediatricians from around the country gather this weekend in San Diego for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, one of the topics they'll tackle is the problem of unvaccinated children.
The rate of California parents who aren’t vaccinating their children has doubled in the past seven years, according to an analysis of state data by the Los Angeles Times.
Westlake Village pediatrician Tanya Altmann said it’s a serious problem.
“Parents are scared because of things they may have heard in the media over the last few years, things that weren’t necessarily true," she said. "And it’s very easy to scare people, but it’s not so easy to un-scare them.”
Altmann said it's hard to understand why some people are terrified of the Ebola virus, yet they don’t seem to be worried about vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports measles cases reached a 20-year high in the U.S. in 2014.
