(ONN) – The head of the Ohio Department of Health is urging parents to keep their kids up to date on vaccines as the new school year approaches.

Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff says required vaccines protect kids from 10 different diseases and he says failure to comply is risky.

“We suffered through a measles outbreak here in Ohio late last year,” Vanderhoff said.

“The outbreak affected 85 children, all unvaccinated, and about 40 percent of the children had to be hospitalized.”

He says a study 25 years ago linking vaccines to autism has been disproven and the study in England making that link was retracted 13 years ago.