While the overwhelming majority of parents in the U.S. get their children vaccinated according to schedule, about 1 percent of children do not receive any vaccines, leaving them at the risk of contracting serious, even deadly, diseases.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from January through mid-October of this year, about 32,000 cases of whooping cough were reported, along with 16 deaths, most of them infants.
In addition, every fall, thousands of children are barred from starting classes because their immunization records are not up to date.
