FORT EUSTIS, Va. –
Children are our greatest gifts and parents want to do what is best to nurture them and protect them from harm. Good health is perhaps one of the greatest gifts. As parents, we want basic things for our children. We want them to grow up knowing that they are loved. We want them to be happy and healthy and vaccination is one of the most important ways a parent can protect their child's health.
The decision to vaccinate a child is a decision to not only protect that individual child, but to protect the community as well by reducing the spread of disease to those who have not been vaccinated either by choice or because of medical reasons.
How do vaccines work? Vaccines give immunity without making children suffer the high price of natural infection.
What is immunity? Let's use chickenpox to explain what we mean by immunity.
Before we had chickenpox vaccine, almost all children got chickenpox. A few children had very mild symptoms, most experienced moderate chicken pox infection consisting of about 300 to 500 blisters, fever and intense itching that lasted for several days. Occasionally, children with chicken pox would get a severe infection of the skin, brain or lungs.
Most of these children were previously healthy children. However, whether children got mild, moderate or severe infection with chickenpox, they had one thing in common: they were not likely to get chickenpox again. They were now immune to chickenpox. The chickenpox vaccine provides the same immunity without having the disease. Therefore, children can get immunity to chickenpox without having to suffer the potentially high price of natural infection.
Are vaccines safe? If safe means risk-free, then vaccines are not 100 percent safe.
Like all medicines, vaccines have mild side effects, such as pain, tenderness or redness at the site of injection. Some vaccines have very rare, but more serious side effects, but nothing is harmless. Anything that we put into our bodies (like vitamins or antibiotics) can have side effects. Even the most routine activities can be associated with hidden dangers. A more reasonable definition of safe would be that the benefits of a vaccine clearly outweigh the risks. For each of the vaccines recommended for children, the benefits far outweigh the risks.
Do we still need vaccines? Vaccines are still given for these reasons:
First, for common diseases (like chickenpox, pertussis or pneumococcus), a choice not to get the vaccine is a choice to risk natural infection. For example, every year thousands of children are infected from pertussis, and some die from the disease. Therefore, it is important to get the vaccine.
Second, some diseases (like measles, mumps, or Hib) still occur in the United States at low levels. If immunization rates drop, even as little as 10 t0 15 percent, these diseases can come back.
Third, while some diseases (like polio, rubella or diphtheria) have either been completely or virtually eliminated from the United States, they still occur in other parts of the world. Polio still commonly paralyzes children in Africa; diphtheria still kills children in Russia; and rubella still causes birth defects and miscarriages in many parts of the world. Because international travel is common, these diseases are only a plane ride away from coming back to the United States.
Infants and young children are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases, that is why it is critical that they are protected through immunization.
Nearly 1 million children in the United States are not adequately immunized and each day, 12,000 children are born in the U.S. and they are in need of protection from 14 vaccine preventable diseases before the age of 2.
Immunizations protect our children, families and community, making them one of the most cost-effective and successful public health strategies. They not only help protect vaccinated individuals from developing potentially serious diseases, they also help protect entire communities by preventing the spread of infectious agents. Diseases that were once common-place, such as polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria, and rubella are now only distant memories for most Americans. Today, there are few reminders of the suffering, disabilities, and premature deaths caused by diseases that are now preventable with vaccines.
Stop by the McDonald Army Health Center Pediatric Clinic if you have any questions regarding your child's immunizations or contact the clinic at 314-7500.