4.10: Protecting Health through Immunization
- Page ID
- 233842
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Fig. 4.10. Healthcare worker placing band-aid over a baby's immunization shot.
Image Source: Immunization Information. Maternity Hub. Shared Care Initiative. Fraser Northwest Division.
Childhood Immunizations
Vaccinations are one of the greatest achievements of science and public health. They have contributed to dramatic declines in vaccine-preventable diseases (diseases that vaccines can help prevent or lessen).
An important way we can protect an individual child’s health (and those around them) is through immunization. While vaccines given through injection may hurt a little, the diseases they prevent diseases that can have serious or lifelong impacts, and in some cases death. Vaccines are biological preparations that improve immunity against a certain disease. Vaccines have contributed to the eradication and weakening of numerous infectious diseases:
- measles
- mumps
- rubella
- smallpox
- chicken pox
- meningitis
- hepatitis B
- polio
- diphtheria
- tetanus
- pertussis (whooping cough)
Measles can cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and blindness, and polio can cause paralysis. Some vaccine-preventable diseases can even result in death. Polio transmission has been eliminated in the United States since 1979, including Wisconsin, due to successful vaccination programs.
Fig. 4.10.1. Toddler covered in measles. Fig 4.10.2. 5-year old girl using crutches and leg braces after contracting polio
Image Source: Lowell Georgia / Science Photo Library Small boy covered with measles rash. Image source: Elaine Burns. The Reluctant Poster Child. PolioPlace. Post-PolioHealthInternational.com. 2011.
How Vaccines Work
Vaccines work very well. No medicine is perfect, of course, but most childhood vaccines produce immunity about 90–100% of the time. Immunizations are important for adults as well as for children.
Here’s why:
- The immune system helps the human body fight germs by producing antibodies to combat them. Antibodies are protective proteins that attach to antigens (foreign substances) — such as bacteria, fungi, viruses and toxins — and remove them from your body.
- Once the immune system produces antibodies to a specific, it “remembers” the germ and can fight it again.
- Vaccines contain germs that have been killed or weakened.
- When given to a healthy person, the vaccine triggers the immune system to respond and thus build immunity
Before vaccines, people gained immunity only by getting and surviving a disease. What about the argument still made by some people that vaccines don’t work that well . . . that diseases would be going away on their own because of better hygiene or sanitation, even if there were no vaccines?
That simply isn’t true.
Now, with better hygiene and sanitation we can help prevent the spread of disease, but the germs that cause disease will still be around, and if they are, they will continue to make people sick.
Immunizations are an easy and less risky way to become immune. Vaccines are the best defense we have against serious, preventable, and sometimes deadly contagious diseases. Looking at the history of any vaccine-preventable disease, shows that the number of cases of disease starts to drop when a vaccine is licensed. Vaccines are the most effective tool we have to prevent infectious diseases.
Vaccines are Safe: Facts vs Myths
Vaccines are an effective means of preventing life-threatening illnesses by boosting the body’s natural immune response to diseases caused by viruses and bacteria. Although vaccines have been proven to be both safe and effective based on sound scientific evidence, several myths have been spread, keeping vaccines at the center of controversy. These concerns range from fears about overloading the child’s immune system to controversial reports about devastating side effects of the vaccines. Although children continue to get several vaccines up to their second birthday, these vaccines do not overload the immune system.
The three top myths circulating are:
Myth 1: Vaccines contain many harmful ingredients
- Fact: Vaccines contain ingredients at appropriate doses that allow the product to be safely administered. Vaccines contain ingredients at a dose that is even lower than the dose we are naturally exposed to in the foods we eat and the products we use everyday.
- A vaccine must go through extensive testing to help ensure its safety, purity, potency and effectiveness. Vaccines undergo thorough testing in laboratories and in clinical trials with human subjects.
- After new vaccines are approved for public use, scientists continue to monitor them by analyzing data about their safety and effectiveness. This helps find and evaluate potential safety concerns as soon as possible. In recent decades, changes in vaccine production and administration have created strong vaccine safety monitoring systems and have reduced the number of side effects after vaccination as well resulted in safer vaccines.
Myth 2: Vaccines cause autism and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
- Fact: Science has not yet determined the cause of autism or SIDS.
- Because both autism and SIDS may be diagnosed around the same age as routine immunizations are given there is no cause and effect the two.
- Rumors that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine was linked to autism occurred because of a widely discredited, unethical, and flawed 1998 study. In fact, there have been several well-controlled independent studies that disprove this theory and have not found any evidence to support a link between vaccinations and autism.
Myth 3: Vaccine-preventable diseases are just part of childhood, it's better to get sick than to get immunized
- Fact: Vaccine-preventable diseases have many serious complications that can be avoided through immunization. Even a disease as common as the flu can be serious. More than 226,000 people (including 20,000 children) are hospitalized from complications of the flu (inflammation of the heart, brain or muscle tissues, or failure of the kidneys or lungs). About 36,000 people die from influenza each year.
- Vaccines stimulate the immune system to produce an immune response similar to natural infection but they don't have the properties to cause full blown illness and do not put the immunized person at risk of a disease's potential complications.
Potential Vaccine Side-Effects
Vaccines are continually monitored for safety but like any medication they can cause side effects in some people. Most of these side effects are minor and go away within a day or two:
- redness or swelling at the injection site
- sore arm
- low-grade fever
- fatigue
- as severe allergic reaction, are very rare.50
Vaccines remain the most effective tool we possess for preventing disease and improving public health in the future. Be aware that a decision not to immunize a child also involves risk and could put the child and others who encounter him or her at risk of contracting a potentially deadly disease.
The Immunization Schedule
On-time vaccination throughout childhood is essential because it helps provide immunity before children are exposed to potentially life-threatening diseases. Vaccines are tested to ensure that they are safe and effective for children to receive at the recommended ages.5
Fully vaccinated children in the U.S. are protected against sixteen potentially harmful diseases. Vaccine-preventable diseases can be very serious, may require hospitalization, or even be deadly — especially in infants and young children.59
Here is the recommended schedule from the CDC to ensure a child is fully vaccinated.
Table 4.10. Immunization Schedule
BIRTH | 2 MONTHS | 4 MONTHS | 6 MONTHS | 12 MONTHS | 15 MONTHS | 18 MONTHS | 4-6 YEARS | 11-12 YEARS | 16 YEARS |
HepB | HepB | HepB | HepB | HepA | HepA | ||||
DTap | DTap | DTap | DTap | DTap | DTap | ||||
Polio | Polio | Polio | Polio | ||||||
Hib | Hib | Hib | Hib | ||||||
PCV | PCV | PCV | PCV | ||||||
RV | RV | RV | |||||||
MMR | MMR | ||||||||
Varicella | Varicella | ||||||||
HPV | |||||||||
MCV4 | MCV4 |
Vaccine-Preventable Diseases: Symptoms and Complications
HepB (Hepatitis B)
- Symptoms: fever, headache, weakness, vomiting, joint pain, jaundice (yellowing of skins and eyes) or no symptoms
- Transmission: contact with blood or body fluids
- Complications: chronic liver infection, liver cancer, liver failure
HepA (Hepatitis A)
- Symptoms: highly contagious liver infection, fatigue, sudden nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, clay or gray-colored stools, jaundice, intense itching
- Transmission: direct contact, contaminated food or water
- Complications: loss of liver function, liver failure
DTap - (Diptheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis (Whooping cough)
- Symptoms (Diptheria): thick, gray membrane covering the throat and tonsils, fever, chills, weakness, swollen glands, breathing diffiuclty
- Symptoms (Tetanus): headache, fever, sudden involuntary muscle spams, seizures, breathing difficulties
- Symptoms (Pertussis): coughing, violently and rapidly, until all air has left the lungs and a person is forced to inhale, causing a "whooping" sound, cold-like symptoms
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications (Diptheria): swelling of the heart muscle, heart failure, coma, paralysis, death
- Complications (Tetanus): laryngospasm (uncontrolled tightening of the vocal cords), pulmonary embolism (blockage in lungs caused by a blood clot), death
- Complications (Pertussis): bacterial pneumonia, seizures, inflammation of the brain, and death
Polio
- Symptoms: sore throat, fever, nausea, headache, muscle pain, stiff neck or no symptoms
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications: encephalitis, meningitis, paralysis, death
Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b)
- Symptoms: fever, chills, cough, chest pain, difficulty breathing, belly pain, diarrhea, nausea, anxiety, confusion
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications: meningitis, amputation due to blood infection, brain damage, hearing loss
PCV (Pneumococcal)
- Symptoms: fever, chills, cough, chest pain, rapid or difficulty breathing
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications: airway blockage, collapsed lung, lung abscess, infenction of the heart lining, blood infection, meningitis, death
RV (Rotavirus)
- Symptoms: diarrhea, fever, vomiting,
- Transmission: through the mouth
- Complications: dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, metabolic acidosis, and in rare cases seizures, encephalitis
MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella/German Measles)
- Symptoms (Measles): rash, fever, cough, pinkeye, runny nose, headache, sore throat, light sensitivity, Koplik spots in mouth
- Symptoms (Mumps): fever, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, swollen salivary lands or lymph nodes, jaw pain, difficulty swallowing, loss of appetite
- Symptoms (Rubella/German Measles): rash, fever, swollen lymph nodes, cough runny notes, sore throat
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications (Measles): ear infection, diarrhea, pneumonia, encephalitis, miscarriage or premature birth, death
- Complications (Mumps): inflammation of testicles leading to testicular atrophy and sterility in males, inflammation of brain, pancreas, ovaries, loss of hearing, death
- Complications (Rubella): miscarriage, premature birth, stillborn baby, birth defects, arthritis (in 70% of women), brain infection
Varicella (Chickenpox)
- Symptoms: rash, headache, fatigue, fever
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications: infected blisters, bleeding disorders encephalitis (brain swelling), pneumonia
MCV4 (Meningococcal, Meningitis)
- Symptoms: fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to light, and confusion, rash
- Transmission: air, direct contact
- Complications: hearing or vision loss, seizures, amputation, cognitive problems (memory, learning, concentration), coordination and balnace issues, death
HPV (Human papillomavirus)
- Symptoms: genital warts, unusual growths, lumps, sores, or no symptoms
- Transmission: direct skin-to-skin contact, childbirth, sexual activity
- Complications: a variety of cancers (cervix, vulva, penis, anus, throat) which often take years or decades to develop
Sources:
- Immunity and Immunizations. Disease Prevention and Healthy Lifestyles Contemporary Health Issues by Judy Baker, Ph.D., licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. LibreTexts Medicine.
- Vaccine Guidance from the Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic Health System. March 13, 2024.
- Vaccine safety: Answers to 6 common questions. Mayo Clinic Health System. August 8, 2024.
- Vaccines: The Myths and the Facts. Tools for the Public. American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.