What would you say to hosp re: NICU visitor vax policy?

[swood]

Please help me help my SIL out.  She works for a hospital here in NC.  She is a secretary at the NICU and told me that recently she received an email sent to the department about how the hospital was considering revising it's policy concerning visitors to the NICU and require that siblings of NICU babies show proof of vaccination in order to be able to visit.

She doesn't have any kids yet and is not well versed on the vaccine issue, but her initial reaction to this announcement was negative and she was afraid that such a policy would cause further hardship to families who are already under duress with a baby in the NICU. The visitor policy already prohibits children under two and anyone who has been sick within the past 24 hours.   She asked me to help her with information and argumentation against implementing such a policy so that she could respond knowledgeably and intelligently whenever it comes up officially in a near-future departmental meeting, as she knows this is an issue I care about too.  However, I am not sure what would be the best things to say, but I told her I had a network that I could ask for information.

Please let me know what you think!

Thank you.

[ma2two]

Most illnesses do not have vaccines. Some vaccines, such as pertussis and inactivated polio, do not prevent transmission. Some vaccines (the live virus ones such as chickenpox, nasal spray flu vaccine, rotavirus, and MMR), can cause the vaccinated person to be contagious for weeks. The vast majority of adults are not fully vaccinated with the vaccines on the childhood schedule.

Will they require parents to get all those vaccines too?  

What could possibly be their justification for requiring the hepatitis B vaccine? How could a child transmit hepatitis B to a NICU baby? If they require that vaccine, they also need to require hepatitis B blood tests of all the adults. What would be their justification for requiring the tetanus vaccine? Tetanus is not contagious. What about diphtheria, for which there is 0-1 case per year in the United States?

They should have a policy that will protect babies from illness that don't have vaccines, as well as from people recently vaccinated with a live virus vaccine. I'm sure they already require handwashing, hand sanitizer, gowns and masks. Requiring children to be "up-to-date" on vaccines doesn't make sense, and is discriminatory.

Edited by ma2two - 9/16/11 at 2:54pm