Over the last 100 years, immunizations have become one of modern medicine’s greatest success stories. With the introduction of vaccines in the twentieth century that provided protection against some of the most common and deadly childhood illness like measles and mumps, polio, and smallpox, the last several generations of parents in the United States have come to know a world where losing a child to such a disease is preventable.
However, when measles reappeared earlier this year at an amusement park in California, infecting more than 170 people from 17 states and the District of Columbia, it put the spotlight on a growing trend of parents choosing not vaccinate their children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the majority of the people who got infected were unvaccinated, and because the disease is still common in other parts of the world, travelers can still bring it into the U.S. and give it those who are unprotected.
“The importance of getting your kids vaccinated cannot be overemphasized,” said Mobeen Rathore, MD, CPE, FAAP, PFIDS, FSHEA, FACPE, FIDSA, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at Wolfson Children’s Hospital and professor and director of the University of Florida Center for HIV/AIDS Research, Education and Service (UF CARES).“Each person who is immunized in a community increases what is called a herd immunity, preventing the spread of a disease by breaking the chain of the infection cycle, and providing a level of protection to those who cannot get vaccinated due to a low immune system, age or pregnancy.”
Dr. Rathore addresses some frequently asked questions below.
Q: Are vaccines safe?
A: The answer to that is very simple: yes, they are safe. They’ve been studied for their safety as well as their ability to prevent diseases that have the potential of making children very ill – possibly causing death in some cases.
Q: Why vaccinate?
A: Because of vaccination, many diseases fortunately no longer exist in the general population. Smallpox has been eradicated as a direct result of vaccinating, and polio has been eliminated from 99 percent of the world. Other diseases such as mumps and chicken pox have been decreased significantly and we see fewer cases but we have to keep immunizing because if we don’t, we lose that important level of immunity, and the disease can come back – as we’ve recently seen with measles.
Q: Why do parents still choose not to get their children immunized?
A: Unfortunately, there’s some misinformation that has caused people to make false assumptions. A 1998 bogus study published in a British medical journal The Lancet suggested a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine and autism, a study that has since been discredited and proven to be scientifically untrue. But the damage was already done, and the number of children getting the MMR vaccine dropped substantially because of the fear generated over it. Over the years there also have been incorrect parallels drawn between reactions to certain vaccines that happened to coincide with unrelated conditions that children already had. The pertussis vaccine was incorrectly associated with causing seizures and neurological problems in some children but it was later confirmed that those children had Dravet Syndrome, a form of epilepsy that begins in infancy.
Q: Which areas of the country fall short in following through with immunization?
A: Throughout the country, the rates are not as good as we’d like to see them. States have different immunization laws, which can lead to such trends. States like Mississippi and West Virginia have the highest immunization rates because they have most stringent laws and few loopholes but in California, for example, the rules are looser. Since the outbreak of measles last summer, however, California has changed the rules to make it harder to skip vaccinations.
Q: Is it ok to space out vaccines?
A: Spacing out vaccinations is very dangerous. Parents worry that they might be overloading their babies’ immune systems but that’s not true. It’s important to go by the standard vaccine schedule approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics. They’ve looked at what vaccines are appropriate to give and at what ages because those are the ages when infection is most likely to occur. Any delay puts the child at increased risk. There are no alternative schedules; theirs is the standard schedule, and all others are “dangerous schedules.” For information on what the recommended vaccination timetable is, you can go to the AAP’s immunization webpage.
Q: Where can you go to find free or low cost vaccines?
A: Children who are on Medicaid are covered for recommended vaccines, and most insurance companies cover necessary immunizations. For those who do not have insurance, the local health department offers them through the Florida Vaccines for Children program.
