Health district offers back-to-school vaccinations
Only a few days remain for Clark County students to receive their immunizations required by all public schools in Nevada.
Classes start in the Clark County School District on Monday, and the Southern Nevada Health District is urging parents to bring their preschool, kindergarten and 7th-grade children to a health district location for their vaccines and boosters.
Vaccinations will be available Monday through Friday at all health district locations. A special back-to-school immunization clinic will be Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the health district’s main facility at 330 S. Valley View Blvd.
Children being vaccinated at a health district clinic should bring their immunization records, available by visiting izrecord.nv.gov or calling 877-689-3249.
For more health district information, contact the immunization clinic at 702-759-0850 or visit www.snhd.info. An administrative fee may apply depending upon insurance status.
State law requires every student to have the following vaccines: diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), tetanus, polio, hepatitis A and B, varicella and MMR, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella.
Visit the state’s website at health.nv.gov/Immunization_SchoolRequirements.htm to see the immunizations required at certain ages and boosted at older ages. The health district also advises all children receiving vaccinations to update their pertussis vaccine.
That recommendation also pertains to adults caring for or living with infants. Cases of pertussis, also known as whooping cough, continue to increase across the country.
Since January, the health district has documented 31 pertussis cases, and it reported 121 cases in 2013. Nearby California recently announced more than 4,500 cases of pertussis since the beginning of year, far surpassing its 2,532 cases in 2013. The number of reported cases nationwide was 9,964 for January through mid-June, a quarter more than the same period of 2013, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Contact Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279. Find him on Twitter: @TrevonMilliard.
