Trends and controversies: Vaccination in children
Recently the issue of vaccination in children has been very present in the press. I investigated about the points for and against it, as well as the importance of vaccination and why certain person known as "anti vaxxers", choose not to vaccinate their children. I will start mentioning some points that support vaccination in children and for the purposes of this work I summarized them at four important points. First immunizations can save children’s lives. Today, thanks to advances in medicine, children can be protected from a large number of diseases.
Some diseases that once eradicated thousands of children, have been completely eliminated and others are about to extinguish, this largely thanks to vaccines. The polio for example, demonstrates the significant impact that vaccines have had in the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) this disease was once the most feared in the United States, causing death and paralysis throughout the country. Thanks to vaccination today there are no reports of polyomyelitis in the United States according to food and medication administration (FDA), vaccines are only administered to children after a long and careful review byof scientists, doctors and health professionals. It has been observed that serious side effects after vaccination are very scarce. The benefits of disease prevention, being vaccinated, are greater than possible side effects for most children. Thus testing the second point that vaccines are safe and efficient.
The third point is that vaccines keep the complete community safe, including vulnerable populations. Children are a vulnerable population, their immune system are still under development. Some babies are very small to protect themselves with vaccination, others have immune systems committed by treatments such as chemotherapy or some cannot receive certain vaccines due to serious allergies. To protect this population, flock immunity is important. According to the Spanish Vaccination Association, this occurs by having a large number of people vaccinated with all immunizations.
Finally, and not least, vaccines can save time and money. The Vaccines for Children (VFC) was created which is funded by the federal government and that provides non -cost vaccines to children from low -income families. Vaccinated against preventable diseases with vaccines, it is usually covered by insurance, so it is effective cost. Some of these diseases can cause long -term disabilities and a great financial cost, due to medical invoices and waste of time at work. Although there are all these very important points that support vaccination, there are people who do not see it like this. They refuse to vaccinate their children and their reasons summarized by two important points below.
The first point against vaccination in children is that the government should not intervene because vaccinating the child is parents’ decision. The CDC recommends obtaining 29 doses of 9 vaccines (plus a flu vaccine every year after 6 months) for children from 0 to 6 years. No federal law requires vaccination, but the 50 states require certain vaccines for children entering public schools. For this reason they claim that he is being discriminated and seen without any other option to have to vaccinate children, since not everyone can afford what a private school would be. If there are religious and physiological (allergic) exceptions, but these require medical approval. "Anti vaxxers" believe that children’s immune system can treat most infections naturally.
On the other hand they allege about the exorbitant amount of vaccines that children are required. They say that vaccines are too many for a child so small and that injectable ingredients of it, in a child can cause side effects such as: seizures, paralysis and death. Here their second point enter, they argue that numerous studies show that vaccines can cause problems such as autism and diabetes. Groups against vaccination and parents began using Wakefield’s article as a justification not to vaccinate their children. In February 1998, Andrew Wakefield, MD, published an article in which he said that "the MMR vaccine is associated with autism".
When investigating both sides about vaccination in children, I think that as a future health professional, vaccination in this population is necessary. It is sad that people are ignoring the importance of vaccinating their children. Thanks to this, cases of diseases such as whore and measles have resurfaced. According to the CDC since 2010, there have been between 10,000 and 50,000 cases of people’s cough in children under five years of age, every year in the United States, until today.
I partially understand the allegations of the "anti vaxxers", there are many vaccines that have to be administered to our children, but although vaccines can present sensitivity in the place of injection, discomfort, redness and pain, this is minimal in comparisonWith the trauma, pain and discomfort of preventable diseases by immunizations. In the same way, with advances in recent years, the amount has decreased, since it is increasingly soughtProtects against rubelola, mumps and measles).
I also think that there is a serious case of false information and lack of education, for example, the allegation of the "anti vaxxers" about the relationship of vaccination with autism. They are based on studies that supposedly found the relationship, as well as the aforementioned Wakefield’s. However, between 2003 and 2012, Brian Deer examined this article and accused him of falsifying medical information of children and essentially inventing a false image, to cause a fear of vaccination. The medical magazine Lancet, who published Wakefield’s article, said that the document does not establish a causal link between the MMR and autism vaccine, since the data were insufficient. Lancet retracted Wakefield’s article on February 2, 2010, stating that several of the data were incorrect.
On January 5, 2011, the "British Journal of Medicine" published an article that exposed Wakefield, in this it was found that he received more than $ 674,000 of lawyers and that, of twelve children examined, five had development problems before vaccinatingAnd three never had autism. As a result, on May 24, 2011, Great Britain took away his medical license, declaring that he had abused his position of trust and had discredited to the medical profession. Deer was not the only one, since more investigations rejected the link between vaccines and autism. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report, in which they establish that "the evidence favors the rejection of a causal relationship between the measles vaccine, papers and rubella (MMR) and autism". On the other hand, the Cochrane collaboration, in an independent investigation, of February 15, 2012, concluded that ‘a significant association between MMR immunization and the following conditions could not be evaluated: autism, asthma, leukemia, hay fever, type diabetes, type diabetes1, alteration march, Chrohn’s disease, among others ".
With so much information proven through research, that they were reviewed and corroborated, I agree that the problem is not vaccinated, but as I already mentioned the lack of education. We must focus on the facts, we see how some diseases have been eradicated over time, so I think we must continue to a future where we continue to eliminate these diseases. I do the exception that although these diseases are no longer seen in the United States or in Puerto Rico, we must continue vaccinating children. This is due to the fact that these diseases if they exist in other parts of the world and it is possible that when traveling they are reimbursed, where it can be propagated again if there is no adequate vaccination. If we stop vaccinating, we will not be protected from these diseases: flock immunity protects us only if enough people continue to vaccinate. If we continue to vaccinate now and vaccinate completely, parents in the future can trust that some diseases today will no longer harm their children in the future.
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