Why Is It Important to Vaccinate Your Child?

Being a parent means having to make many tough decisions to ensure your child remains safe and healthy. From the right car seat to baby proofing your home, you will spend a lot of time considering their safety. While some parents are against child vaccinations, you might be thinking about that again since the importance of vaccinating your child can be more than you know. Read on to learn it.

Why Is It Important to Vaccinate Your Child?

Prevent disease

There are many diseases that can still be passed along that vaccines protect against. Since it is easier than ever to travel around the world and to countries where these diseases can be more common, it is highly important to be vaccinated.

Keeps baby healthier

Vaccines can protect them from infections such as the flu, pneumococcal disease, hepatitis A and B and many other diseases for a lifetime. When your children receive vaccinations at the appropriate age, like from birth, they are better protected against these diseases over the course of the entire life.

Preventive care

Just as you get regular screening for certain cancers and other illness as a preventative measure, vaccines act in the same way. Vaccinations are a preventative form of health care that keeps your children safe and healthy.

Cost efficient

When you consider how much it would cost if your children were to be diagnosed with one of the diseases that vaccines can protect them against, you would know it will save you plenty. Not only does it save your children in future health cost to treat the disease, it saves them from having to miss work. Catching any of the diseases or illnesses that vaccines are designed to protect against can lead to missing weeks or months of work. If your child becomes sick, you still will have to miss many days of work to stay home to care for them.

Children are at a higher risk

Children and the elderly are at a higher risk of catching a disease that could have been prevented with a vaccination. The importance of vaccinating your child is to keep them safe from those who have not been vaccinated. Early vaccinations are important to keep your baby healthy and at lower risk of becoming seriously ill.

Safe and effective

Vaccines inject patients with a killed virus of a particular disease or a weakened strain of the virus, so you do not catch the disease from the vaccines as many believe. This allows your children to build up an immunity to the disease. Vaccines are one of the most effective types of disease prevention and are among one of the safest. Getting vaccinated often has few side effects, most of which are mild and go away after a day or two. Many vaccines not only reduce your children's risk of catching the disease, but also reduce the risk of others who are unable to become vaccinated from catching the disease.

FAQs About Vaccinating Many Parents Want to Know

Q1. If the disease is not common anymore, why should I vaccinate my child?

The decrease in people becoming infected with many of these diseases is due to the fact that the vaccinations are being used. Without getting vaccinated, you increase the chance of these diseases becoming more common. Since there are many parts of the world where vaccines are not accessible and some children are unable to be vaccinated, it is not impossible for there to be a breakout of these diseases. If more and more children are not vaccinated, this increases the potential of the disease coming back and seriously affecting thousands of or even millions of people.

Q2. Are there any serious side effects from the vaccination?

Many parents know the importance of vaccinating your children, but are reluctant because they fear the side effects of getting the vaccines. There are often mild side effects around the injection site like swelling, tenderness and redness which only last for a few days. Young children may have a fever or can become fussy for a day after getting a shot. Rarely are their serious side effects like a fever over 103 degrees, hives, bruising around the injection site or seizure. If any of these serious side effects are present, you should contact the doctor immediately. But usually, the doctors will deal with these conditions successfully.

Q3. People who have been vaccinated still end up catching the disease, so how can it be effective?

The vaccines are 90 to 99% effective at preventing disease. Individuals who do end up catching the disease often have much milder symptoms and complications when they have been vaccinated. While it can still be possible to contract the disease even though you have been vaccinated, the seriousness of the symptoms are less severe and the vaccination can even prevent fatality.

Q4. Should every child be vaccinated?

There are some children who should avoid getting vaccinations. Those with cancer, lung or kidney conditions, or those with weakened immune system are unable to be vaccinated either due to their immune system or because of other medications they have to take. You can talk with your doctors for discussing about that.

Q5. Is it possible to receive too many vaccinations at once?

If you are weighing the importance of vaccinating your children against the pressure it can place on their immune system, you will be relieved to learn that getting many vaccinations at a young age won't overload their system. The vaccines do not weaken their immune system since their immune system is designed to handle and protect them against thousands of different viruses, bacteria, and toxins. Vaccines only require a very small fraction of the immune system to ward of the weakened strand.

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