By Leslie Knowling
Holmes County Health Department
March 1, 2010
854
One of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine has been the development of vaccines. Vaccines save 33,000 childrens lives per year and as a result, the leading cause of death in this country has shifted from infectious disease to chronic disease. Unfortunately, vaccines are becoming a victim of their own success. Many parents as well as medical personnel have never seen some of these diseases and forget how serious they can be, especially to small children. In the absence of seeing the disease, some are questioning the vaccines. Because some of these diseases are rarely seen, parents wonder if their children even need vaccines.
Anything parents give to their children can potentially cause side effects, whether it is Tylenol, antibiotics or vaccines. Parents and the medical community need to look at the risks of giving vaccines versus the risks of not giving the vaccines. Reliable science-based studies have continued to show that vaccines are safe, with minimal side effects (soreness, fever) in most children. In addition, even though these infectious diseases are rare, there have been outbreaks of diseases thought to be rare (whooping cough, measles, mumps) as well as continuing hospitalizations and deaths from diseases that could be prevented with some of the newer vaccines (chickenpox, meningococcal meningitis, pneumonia).
Some parents feel that avoiding vaccines is safer than risking the side effects they read about on the Internet that are not scientifically proven. Avoiding vaccines is not a risk-free choice. When considering the risk of vaccines and the risk of diseases, vaccines are the safer choice. In the following months, Immunization Works! will discuss the safety issues that concern parents and direct parents to additional reliable information so that they can make educated decisions about their children and vaccines.
