Nearly 2,000 SC kids didn’t get full immunization and will need more shots, hospital says
Most children hate going to the doctor to get a shot.
Now, nearly 2,000 kids in South Carolina have to return to get the same injections a second time.
That’s what one of South Carolina’s largest health care providers wrote to Upstate parents when alerting them their children might not have been fully immunized during a previous injection. It also said something else — sorry.
“We apologize for any worry we’ve caused and for the inconvenience of re-immunizing their children,” Dr. Robin LaCroix, medical director of Children’s Hospital of Greenville Health System, said in a Facebook post Thursday.
In her statement, LaCroix said the problem was children might not have received full doses of vaccinations. It was caused by “human error.”
While explaining what must be done to fix the under-immunizations, LaCroix said the person who made the error has also been addressed.
“We have taken appropriate follow-up actions, and the team member who provided the immunizations in question is no longer with the practice,” LaCroix said in the statement.
The health care system said 1,800 children need to be re-immunized, according to WYFF. LaCroix said they range in age from 2-months-old to teenagers, per Greenville News.
The children impacted received vaccines to prevent common childhood illnesses at two locations, Pediatric Associates-Easley and Pediatric Associates-Powdersville. Both will be offering free re-immunizations to the children, according to Greenville Health System.
A spokesperson for the healthcare network said it was believed that far less than 1,800 children actually required another round of vaccinations, but no chances were being taken, WHNS reported.
“GHS believes that very few children actually received less-than-optimal dosing, but even one child is too many,” spokesperson Sandy Dees said, according to the TV station.
LaCroix said Greenville Health System was following a recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to repeat immunizations when the initial immunization can’t be confirmed.
“Even one child affected by this error is too many, and we want families to know that their children’s health and safety is our top priority,” LaCroix said. “We will work hard to make sure all potentially affected children receive full and appropriate immunizations in ways that are most convenient for their families.”
According to GHS, there have been no reports of “potentially impacted children” becoming sick because they did not receive a full immunization, WYFF reported.
