MANITOULIN—Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, has issued a stark warning: the province’s patchwork vaccine record system is no longer fit for purpose. His 2024 annual report, ‘Protecting Tomorrow,’ calls for sweeping modernization—both within Ontario and across Canada—after the country’s worst measles outbreak in decades left more than 2,000 people infected.
On Manitoulin, the cracks in the system are familiar. Parents often find themselves digging through paper slips or phoning past clinics to pull together vaccination histories when registering children for school. Families who move between communities—or who rely on multiple health providers, from public health nurses to hospital clinics—know how easily records become scattered. What seems like a small clerical hassle can quickly become a public health vulnerability, as the measles resurgence showed.
Dr. Moore is urging the province to create a single, comprehensive digital registry that follows residents across their lifetimes, capturing every vaccine administered. Beyond Ontario, he is pressing for a national vaccine schedule and registry to prevent duplication, close dangerous gaps, and allow for stronger coordination during outbreaks.
The Public Health Agency of Canada has already begun working with provinces to knit together a surveillance system for vaccine coverage. As of last fall, five provinces and one territory had begun submitting records, though Ontario has yet to fully step into line.
The stakes are not only medical but economic. A unified national schedule, Dr. Moore argues, would enable centralized bulk purchasing, driving down costs, preventing unnecessary duplicate shots, and reducing hospitalizations.
But behind the push for digital reform lies another challenge: declining vaccine confidence. Public health officials across the Island have noted rising questions, fatigue, and outright mistrust around vaccines. A modernized, accessible registry could help restore confidence by providing clarity and transparency—tools communities like ours need to keep preventable disease from regaining a foothold.
For Manitoulin, the lesson is blunt. When outbreaks come, distance from major hospitals magnifies the risk. Local clinics and public health offices are the front lines but their efforts are undermined by a fractured record system that too often leaves families and providers scrambling. Dr. Moore’s call for a stronger, unified registry is more than an abstract policy recommendation—it’s a reminder that prevention, coordination and trust are the invisible shield we rely on.
How vaccine records are kept on the Island
On Manitoulin, vaccine tracking has long been a patchwork effort. Public Health Sudbury and Districts manages immunization reporting, but the responsibility for keeping records up to date often falls to parents themselves, who must submit copies of slips after each appointment. Schools help deliver routine shots for youth, but those records don’t always make their way back into family doctors’ files. Clinics and hospitals keep their own charts, which may not be shared beyond their walls.
The result is a system in which many families act as their own archivists, carrying paper cards or folders across appointments to bridge the gaps. A child vaccinated in Little Current might have part of their record at the Manitoulin Health Centre, another piece in a public health database, and yet another slip of paper tucked into a parent’s drawer at home.
When everything runs smoothly, this quiet patchwork goes unnoticed. But when an outbreak strikes — as measles did last year — the lack of a central record leaves communities scrambling for clarity. On Manitoulin, where prevention is often the strongest defence, the cracks in the system are not just administrative.
