Vaccination Benefits

“By one account, pediatric immunizations are responsible for preventing 3 million deaths in children each year worldwide” (Diekema). Vaccinations can provide children with many benefits and could be a key method to preventing deaths. Vaccines are important to improving the health of children throughout the country. According to a recent survey, 80% of people viewed vaccines as a positive thing and 88% believed that the benefits far outweigh the risks (Steele). A high percentage of people believe that vaccines are effective and help benefit children in numerous ways. Benefits to getting vaccinated include: they protect children from getting serious illnesses, they protect other people and the community from getting sick, and they help the body
There are numerous of diseases that can be prevented by getting vaccinated. Vaccines are “a powerful defense that’s safe, proven, and effective” (“What are the Reasons”) to protect children from many of the childhood diseases. According to Dr. Feder, vaccinations are believed to be the reason for the decline in childhood illnesses. They have limited the occurrence of multiple diseases in childhood health. Vaccinations are a beneficial method to keeping children healthy because they have low risk and are rather harmless to children (Feder). Most healthcare professionals recommend getting children vaccinated to benefit their overall health. Vaccinations can prevent children from getting sick and potentially protect them from life threatening diseases. As stated in the article “Pros and Cons of Vaccinations”, healthcare professionals solidly believe that “vaccinations aid in maintaining personal health when entering adulthood.” Vaccinating children is a great precaution to protecting them for life against the serious, sometimes deadly,
When a child is injected with a vaccine, it imitates a certain disease, which causes the immune system to respond like it would to the actual disease (“For Parents”). This allows the body to become familiar with the disease to help fight it in the future. Before birth, the neonatal immune system has the ability to respond to large quantities of foreign antigens (Offit). Antigens are the bacterial parts of vaccines that allow the immune system to fight off future infections by building up antibodies (Haelle). Neonates receive antibodies from the mother before birth, which protects them against pathogens the mother was immune to. Protection by the mother’s antibodies is short-lived making it necessary for infants to get vaccinated. About ninety percent of young infants “develop active protective immune responses” to many series of vaccines (Offit). Given certain factors, researchers found that by giving children eleven vaccines at one time, only around 0.1% of the immune system is “used up” (Offit). The immune system has a large capacity to generate more lymphocytes, which in turn means it is never actually used up by vaccines. Although children today are receiving more routine vaccines, they are exposed to less antigens in the vaccines. Table 2 shows the number of proteins contained in past and present vaccines that are commonly recommended by