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BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Some parents say a crackdown on medical exemptions for student vaccines in New York state is unfairly keeping their children out of school.
The state made it harder to obtain a medical exemption after doing away with all other exemptions for vaccines. State officials say they want to make sure only students with legitimate medical reasons are unvaccinated.
But advocates say some of the affected children have good medical reasons to avoid vaccines and the guidance of family doctors is being overruled by school districts on the advice of state health officials.
State officials said they did not want a repeat of what happened in California, where medical exemptions more than tripled in the three years after they became the only allowable reason for a student to be unvaccinated.
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