Child Welfare Clinic

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 immun
  
  
  ity against some vaccine-preventable 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.

Why are children dying?

More than 30 million children are unimmunized either because vaccines are unavailable, because health services are poorly provided or inaccessible, or because families are uninformed or misinformed about when and why to bring their children for immunization.Pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition are the primary killers of children in the developing world. These children die because they are poor, they do not have access to routine immunization or health services, their diets lack sufficient vitamin A and other essential micronutrients, and they live in circumstances that allow pathogens (disease-causing organisms) to thrive.

The possibility that children will become seriously ill or die depends largely on whether their immune systems can fight off infections. Malnutrition, combined with unsanitary or crowded conditions, makes them extremely vulnerable. Measles, for instance, rarely kills in industrial countries but can cause up to 40 per cent mortality among infected children in dire and overcrowded situations which may occur following earthquakes, floods or when populations are displaced by conflict.

A variety of pathogens – bacteria, viruses and parasites – are responsible for the major childhood diseases. Bacteria causes tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis and tuberculosis. Viruses cause polio and measles. A single-celled parasite causes malaria.