Topeka ? The percentage of children in Kansas receiving proper immunizations increased last year.

The federal Centers for Disease Control reports that the state was above the national average for one standard set of shots.

In recent years, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment has worked to increase immunization rates because its officials were concerned about relatively low rates.

In 2007, according to a CDC survey, 81.7 percent of Kansas children received a standard set of 14 shots before entering school to protect them against nine diseases, including polio, measles and whooping cough.

That’s 2.7 percentage points higher than the state’s rate for 2006.

Kansas ranked 15th in the nation, and the national rate was 80.1 percent.

But Kansas ranked 35th when it came to the percentage of children who receive the same battery of shots, plus a chicken pox vaccine, before entering school. The state’s rate was 76 percent.

That was 6.1 percentage points higher than in 2006, but below the national average of 77.4 percent, according to the CDC survey.