The Importance Of Vaccination For Children

Vaccination was first introduced globally for small pox and later on extended to other communicable diseases which are now known as vaccine preventable disease. Vaccination is beneficial both for individuals and community. This bring us to the ethical dilemma - Vaccination of a healthy child with the intention of protecting both the individual child and the community at the same time exposing the child to the theoretical risk of exposure to disease products whether live, attenuated or killed. There was a time when people never questioned the government or their physicians. Now because of more public awareness and accessibility to medical information, they are questioning the safety aspects of vaccines.

Vaccination protects the spread of diseases around us. Getting vaccinated doesn’t only mean helping yourself, it means helping other people around you too. “The U.S. has seen 118 cases as of mid-May, compared with the 56 cases a year from 2001-2008” (Ropeik). This is important because it’s saying that the rate of vaccination is decreasing, which disease will be increasing. We shouldn’t let this continue because diseases would be spreading faster than ever. We should be alarmed and need to take action for our future and get vaccinated now. Getting vaccinated means protecting ourselves and our community. That’s the reason why vaccine were there in the first place, to

There is much debate and controversy about child vaccinations being safe or not. Parents wonder should they get

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? Parents with infants and young children have been tussling with this proverbial question for several decades now. With the advent of the internet and the World Wide Web, parents have been bombarded with a plethora of information about pros and cons of vaccines from all kinds of sources, some creditable, and some are not. To the non-scientific community, these conflicting information can create problems in the decision making process; thus, forcing parents to make the wrong choices and putting their offspring and others at risk. However, this article will attempt to address the importance of vaccinations, how vaccines work, why we should vaccinate, and why parents should not be afraid to vaccinate their offspring.

To Vaccinate or not to vaccinate, has been a question many parents in America have been asking themselves for years. Some parents believe that it is their right to decide if their children will be vaccinated; while some states believe that all children should be vaccinated. There are logical and illogical reasons for this argument. There should be a federal law that requires parents to vaccinate their children because it will lower the number of deaths, benefit those children who have lower immune systems, and it can get rid of some diseases all together in the future.

There are many arguments that people have developed and built upon that are convincing me of the importance of the vaccinations. The benefits of vaccinations really were shown when “The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that 732,000 American children were saved from death and 322 million cases of childhood illnesses were prevented between 1994 and 2014 due to vaccination” (Huffington). This is proof right in front of our eyes that vaccinations are working for some children. Something that saves 732,000 lives is a very important asset. Also, I think that it is critical to take into account the 322 million children that were saved from sickness. These 322 million children were kept from getting an illness that could be life threatening or even just uncomfortable. No matter the severity of the sickness there is an importance in the prevention of these diseases. Another intriguing argument for the continued use and importance of vaccines is that “most childhood vaccines are 90%-99% effective in preventing disease” (AAP). With a 90%-99% success rate it shows that it is so important to receive a vaccination because of the dangers of the diseases. In fact the 90%-99% effectiveness has “save[ed] 2.5 million children from preventable diseases every year” (Shot@Life). This direct correlation between these two arguments makes this side of the topic even more compelling. Another statistic that creates a realization that there may be more to vaccinations than we see on the

According to the CDC (2014) vaccinations are one of the best ways to put an end to the serious effects of certain diseases, some that can be deadly. Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children are not just gambling with their child’s life, they are also gambling with the lives of others. It is always better to prevent a disease than to have to treat it after it occurs. People with weakened immune systems are not as strong such as pregnant women, newborns, cancer patients, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive people, transplant recipients, and the elderly are also affected by the choice not to vaccinate.

There appears to be an alarmingly large group of people that don’t mind exposing their children to serious harm; in recent years, many adults have decided against vaccinating their children. This is unusual, as vaccines are non-lethal, very safe protection for children; they are even cost-effective for their parents and are considerably safer for the entire family when these children are vaccinated routinely (Prosser, 1548). Jennifer Hamborsky of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention essentially describes vaccination as the administration of antigenic material to stimulate an individual 's immune system to develop adaptive immunity to a pathogen- and vaccination

Would you ever take away a prime defense from your child? Some parents are doing so without even knowing it. Per Glanz and Daley, “Last year 10 children died in California in the worst whooping cough outbreak to sweep the state since 1947.” (Daley, Glanz, N.p.) These are illnesses that are preventable with vaccinations. Childhood vaccinations are key for the protection of children, the people around them and the prevention of widespread disease.

“In 2011 alone, 1.5 million children died [worldwide] from diseases preventable by currently recommended vaccines” (“Immunization” 2). The magnitude of this tragedy is in part caused by the fact that some of those children simply weren’t reached by organizations like UNICEF, which aim to vaccinate children (“Immunization” 2). However, there are other reasons for the recent deaths and epidemics—such as the whooping cough epidemic of 2012, with 48,000 cases nationally in the United States—involving vaccine preventable diseases (McClay 1).

Some people face these risks when not exposing themselves or their children to diseases by not getting immunized. People shouldn’t have to suffer if there is a way for them to save themselves and immunizations help with that. The American Academy of Pediatrics by Margaret Maglione suggests that there are several reasons why parents choose to not expose their children to these vaccinations. She asserts concerns about vaccines for various reasons that led some parents to decline recommended vaccinations and it has led to the progression of the illnesses to the population. Therefore, more people will become stricken with sickness. Being able to take care of themselves by allowing family members, children, and whoever to vaccinated can save lives. The histories of deadly diseases and their effect on the in the U.S. population have proven to be an example of why people should be immune to such avoidable

The vaccination of children is a common practice in the United States. It has helped prevent the spread of infectious diseases that has plagued our society since the dawn of time. Since the decline of those infectious diseases, the United States and other countries have gone to what is called “herd immunity,” which is a mandatory vaccination of a majority of children to protect the mass population from contracting those easily communicable diseases (Orenstein & Yang, 2015). However, as of late the numbers of unvaccinated children are going up. Why is this happening? Why are so many parents choosing not to vaccinate their children? To answer those questions one must look at the reason why childhood vaccinations are required and why people choose to have their children vaccinated. Many parents believe some vaccinations help build their children’s immune system, but for other parents vaccinations are looked at as a risk to their children’s health and well-being. Many studies have been conducted to compile information to quantify the need for mass vaccinations, but childhood vaccinations have become so common in today’s society, that it’s hard to find a large percentage of unvaccinated children to gather a significant amount of data from. This is because the groups of unvaccinated children are too small and wide spread to consistently provide relevant data. This has led to a very controversial debate between parents, medical professionals and government officials about

Often debated, with strong convictions on each side, timely immunizations for children do more good then harm. Over the last few years, a phenomenon has come to our door steps. It used to be that all parents would immunize their children, without fail, because doctors told them to. In the past, the only non-immunized children were the children with health deficiencies. These children depended on the “herd” mentality. However, times are changing and parents are choosing to not immunize their children mainly based on these reasons: the possibility of them getting autism, parental lack of education about immunizations and lastly they believe that the illnesses that children are being immunized against are gone and immunizations are no longer needed.

Having the immunity when your child is exposed to the disease is extremely important. Vaccines have come a long way and many diseases have been eradicated due to people choosing to vaccinate.

In contrast, a positive aspect of many people having vaccinations is herd immunity. Herd immunity is the occurrence where a large proportion of a specific population is vaccinated to provide them immunity, and as a result, it also gives some protection to the people of the population who have and yet developed immunity. This happens as the a large group of vaccinated individuals are protected from a virus and creates difficulty for the it to spread because there is only a small percentage of the population left that could be infected by the disease. It is a very crucial aspect of immunity for the community as the people who cannot receive vaccinations (i.e. people with weak immune systems, very young children and patients who are too ill)