Vaccines Are The Most Important Health Practice

Vaccines are one of most successful and cost effective public health preventive tool in current century for preventing communicable diseases. According to UK Health Protection Agency (HPA), vaccination is the second most effective public health intervention worldwide. Immunization protects the individual as well the community from serious diseases. Since the implementation of immunization there has been a 95% reduction in the cases 4. According to WHO immunization prevented 2million deaths worldwide.

Despite significant progress in the fight against preventable disease, millions still die needlessly each year. According to UNICEF, originally known as the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, a vaccine preventable disease is responsible for 2 million fatal infections worldwide each year. About 75% of these deaths occur in children under five years of age. (N) In more vivid terms, UNICEF notes that vaccine-preventable diseases kill a child every 20 seconds. (D) Due to high rates of childhood vaccination, the United States has experienced a dramatic reduction in such deaths. A comparison of the years 1950 and 2010 clearly illustrates the benefits of vaccinations. During this 60-year period, deaths from diphtheria reduced from 410 to 0, tetanus from 336 to 3, pertussis from 1,118 to 26, and polio from 1,904 to 0. Measles deaths dropped from 468 in 1950 to 0 in 2008, the last year a United States death rate was recorded. It’s not surprising that vaccinations have been touted as one of the top ten health achievements of the 20th century by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Failure to immunize people impacts negatively on a country 's growth as it is a health burden to the public. This is because most people are left with chronic disease conditions that are difficult to manage; as such infections require complex and costly care. It is imperative to note that there are many barriers to enhancing the use of adult vaccination among people. The low rates of vaccination indicate the existence of limited public and provider knowledge on the issue of immunization. Other issues include existence of different economic constraints and infrastructure to support the program. Adult immunization is undervalued by the public and healthcare providers as very little information is known about its benefit.

Many people in countries like the United States take vaccines for granted and do not appreciate the benefits that come with their country-wide, mandated use. Similarly, each year about “three million children die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases,” therefore the vaccines that people would love to have access to could be going to children in need (Greenwood). In less developed countries, people are lucky to get vaccinated for common diseases, and jump at the opportunity to get a vaccine. Due to the many who die because vaccines are not available, people need to accept the vaccines are a luxury. Vaccines are safe to give to children and prevent children from becoming part of the one in three million who die because they did not get

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim that immunizations are one of the most successful interventions in public health history (2015). The CDC is qualified to make this statement as research shows the vaccinations have eradicated smallpox and nearly eliminated the polio virus, in addition to diminishing the occurrences of preventable infectious diseases such as measles, diphtheria and whooping cough (2015). However, despite the statistics and research, in 2015, only 71.6% of the children between 19 and 35 months received the combined 7 vaccine series (CDC, 2015). This decline in vaccination rate can have devastating effects not only on the individual child, but also on the community, as a whole. Consequently,

“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).

According to the World Health Organization, one in ten infants worldwide did not receive any vaccinations in 2016 (Fadela). Additionally, many children receive their first round of vaccinations, but they do not continue with the additional rounds. Without vaccinations, children are at risk for potentially fatal illnesses. A child is exposed to viruses every single day, whether the child goes into a public setting or an infected person visits his or her home. Vaccinations are important for the protection of a child’s undeveloped immune system and preventing a child from diseases.. While parents may have multiple reasons for deciding against vaccinating their children, these children face serious medical

Commonly used vaccines are a cost – effective and preventive way of promoting good health, compared to the cost of treatment of acute or chronic diseases. In the U.S. during the year 2001, routine childhood immunizations against seven diseases were estimated to save over $40 billion per year, overall social costs including $10 billion in direct health costs, and the societal benefit – cost ratio for these vaccinations was

Vaccines have decreased the mortality and suffering caused by infectious diseases. People who refuse to vaccinate take advantage of the large majority of people who do vaccinate, free-riding off of their immunity. As more people refuse vaccination, herd immunity starts to fail and this puts everyone at risk.” A great amount of people in the world who accept refusal of vaccinations as a right. Believing vaccinations pose danger and seem unsafe, some parents choose not to vaccinate their children. They do not realize if their children do not get vaccinated they may acquire an infectious disease that may not only make them sick, but could potentially kill them; also, it could infect other family members or other people in the community, and consequently produce an outbreak of the

Protecting a child’s health is very important to parents! That is why they should vaccinate them as a young child. All children should be required to have vaccinations in order to start school in every state. Each year about 85% of the world’s youth receive vaccines that protect them against several diseases like, tuberculosis, pneumococcus, and many more. Even with great success, and improvements with vaccinations, more than 3 million people die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases. An estimate of about 1.5 million of these deaths are in children less than 5 years old, of the top ten reported

Our plan of action that we will take forward to help in resolving this issue consists of multiple steps. First of all, we plan on creating an informative website that will help raise awareness and educate the public about the importance of getting immunized and the risks and consequences of not getting vaccinated. Next we plan on trying some kind of partnership with UNICEF to fundraise money that will go towards providing vaccines for population mainly of children and women who don’t have access to vaccinations and disease prevention possibilities. Next we plan to possibly make awareness advertisements about the importance of immunization to raise attention to the issue and allow individuals to start taking action to become active global citizens.

In order to emphasize the significance of creating organized education interventions specific to a country’s socioeconomic factors, I will compare the impact of the discussions in several countries. As expressed by the results of the survey conducted by Lori K. Handy et al., parents from Greece, Botswana, and the Dominican Republic had differing opinions about their confidence in vaccination education. Therefore, a country’s political, economic, and social state can have an impact on parents’ trust in healthcare providers as well. The responses from the participants in the

This paper examines the controversy surrounding the public health issue of vaccinations in children. Following a careful review of the literature surrounding this issue, the possible reasons for and implications of having a large percentage of the population who remains unvaccinated are discussed. Possible interventions and purposed interventions for resolution of this problem are discussed and conclusions are drawn based on what it learned from the literature.

With modern vaccinations here in the United States and in many other modernized countries, population-threatening diseases are less likely to spread and wipe out the world. With limited or no access to these vaccines, countries, like the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and others nearby, diseases (especially new diseases or old, forgotten diseases that don’t have a vaccine or cure) are more likely to spread with their lack of personal hygiene and clean water. Sending out medical professionals or volunteers from other countries increases risk of infecting the helpers and spreading the

With immunization, a country’s growth can be boosted, as immunization makes economic sense. Though there are some challenges in being able to vaccinate all target children, UNICEF has made major initiatives and major progress.