Parents are constantly concerned
about the health and safety of their children and they take
many steps to protect them. These preventive measures range from
child-proof door latches to
child safety seats. In the same respect, vaccines work to safeguard
children from illnesses and
death caused by infectious diseases. Vaccines protect children by
helping prepare their bodies
to fight often serious, and potentially, deadly diseases.
A weakened form of the disease germ is injected into the body. The
body makes antibodies to
fight these invaders. If actual disease germs ever attack the body,
the antibodies will still be
there to destroy them.
Disease Prevention--Protect Those Around You
Disease prevention is the key to public health. It is always better
to prevent a disease than to
treat it. Vaccines prevent disease in the people who receive them
and protect those who come
into contact with unvaccinated individuals. Vaccines help prevent
infectious diseases and save
lives. Vaccines are responsible for the control of many infectious
diseases that were once
common in this country, including polio, measles, diphtheria,
pertussis (whooping cough),
rubella (German measles), mumps, tetanus, and Haemophilus
influenzae type b (Hib).
Vaccine-preventable diseases have a costly impact, resulting in
doctor's visits, hospitalizations,
and premature deaths. Sick children can also cause parents to lose
time from work.
Each child is born with a full immune system composed of cells,
glands, organs, and fluids that
are located throughout his or her body to fight invading bacteria
and viruses. The immune
system recognizes germs that enter the body as "foreign" invaders,
or antigens, and produces
protein substances called antibodies to fight them. A normal,
healthy immune system has the
ability to produce millions of these antibodies to defend against
thousands of attacks every day,
doing it so naturally that people are not even aware they are being
attacked and defended so
often (Whitney, 1990). Many antibodies disappear once they have
destroyed the invading
antigens, but the cells involved in antibody production remain and
become "memory cells."
Memory cells remember the original antigen and then defend against
it when the antigen
attempts to re-infect a person, even after many decades. This
protection is called immunity.
Vaccines contain the same antigens or parts of antigens that cause
diseases, but the antigens in
vaccines are either killed or greatly weakened. When they are
injected into fatty tissue or
muscle, vaccine antigens are not strong enough to produce the
symptoms and signs of the
disease but are strong enough for the immune system to produce
antibodies against them
(Tortora and Anagnostakos, 1981). The memory cells that remain
prevent re-infection when
they encounter that disease in the future. Thus, through
vaccination, children develop
immunity without suffering from the actual diseases that vaccines
prevent.
Why are Childhood Vaccines So Important?
It's true that newborn babies are immune to many diseases because
they have antibodies they
got from their mothers. However, the duration of this immunity may
last only a month to about
a year. Further, young children do not have maternal immunity
against some vaccinepreventable
diseases, such as whooping cough.
If a child is not vaccinated and is exposed to a disease germ, the
child's body may not be strong
enough to fight the disease. Before vaccines, many children died
from diseases that vaccines
now prevent, such as whooping cough, measles, and polio. Those same
germs exist today, but
babies are now protected by vaccines, so we do not see these
diseases as often.
Immunizing individual children also helps to protect the health of
our community, especially
those people who are not immunized. People who are not immunized
include those who are
too young to be vaccinated (e.g., children less than a year old
cannot receive the measles
vaccine but can be infected by the measles virus), those who cannot
be vaccinated for medical
reasons (e.g., children with leukemia), and those who cannot make
an adequate response to
vaccination. Also protected, therefore, are people who received a
vaccine, but who have not
developed immunity. In addition, people who are sick will be less
likely to be exposed to
disease germs that can be passed around by unvaccinated children.
Immunization also slows
down or stops disease outbreaks.