Alarms are beginning to sound louder and louder. What a few years ago was more or less controllable is beginning to get out of control, and I talk about disease outbreaks that thanks to childhood vaccines They were almost controlled and that, as a result of the anti-vaccine fashion, they are taking place all over the world.
UNICEF says that vaccination saves lives around the world, especially in developing countries where mortality is high, but they also contribute in developed countries, such as ours, to the population having a better level of health and lower Risks of suffering from major diseases, which is not little.
Since Babies and more We support UNICEF, logically, because we believe that everyone should fight for a common good, which is none other than trying to offer our children the best possible health andOne of the measures that most prevents the disease is vaccination. In fact, I believe that the best thing a national health system can do for a child's health is to vaccinate him.
WHO is also positioned
There are many things that have been said so far about vaccines, many of them uncertain and that aim to disqualify them. WHO published a very interesting document some time ago in which it talked about six false ideas about vaccines, in which he commented on the following points:
- Although hygiene, improved nutrition and other aspects of the environment helped to greatly improve the health of children and adults, the mass vaccinations were those that controlled the diseases that prevent.
- Unvaccinated people always get more sick from diseases for which they have not been protected that vaccinated people, although the effectiveness is not 100%
- It is true that there are lots of defective vaccines. In this case, parents and professionals should know the numbers of the lots to avoid being used. This, unfortunately, also happens with other medications and even baby foods, such as baby milk formulas.
- Vaccines, Like any medication, they have possible side effects, mostly mild. Statistically, it is estimated that the risk of having any symptoms from the vaccine is lower than the chances of getting sick if you don't get vaccinated.
- The diseases, although they occur with different incidence in different countries, move, because people also move. The fewer people vaccinated, the greater the risk of infection., since in the same way that people from other countries come, citizens of our country travel to countries where the risk of infection, not being vaccinated, is much greater.
- Babies can get vaccinated for several vaccines at the same time without this causing harm to your health.
Viruses have not been eradicated
When parents ask about what childhood vaccines carry and they are explained, many do not understand why their child is vaccinated from diseases such as polio, diphtheria or pertussis, if the rates are low (or very low) and in some cases there is no news of the disease in Spain for decades.
Well, the reason is that viruses are not eradicated in the world and therefore, and now more than ever that, as I said, the borders between countries are increasingly blurred, it is necessary to continue vaccinating the more children better, to avoid being at risk now or when they are adults.
For solidarity
In an increasingly selfish world, the act of vaccinating our children becomes a selfish good (I want my child to be healthier than all children who cannot or do not want to be vaccinated) and at the same time in a solidary act, because when most children get vaccinated, all those who cannot get vaccinated or have not yet been vaccinated, are protected.
It is what is called group immunity. If the majority of the population cannot catch a disease, minorities will hardly catch it, because no one can infect them. Therefore, by vaccinating our children and being a majority, sick children and adults, at risk, who cannot be vaccinated due to medical contraindication will not be able to get sick (or they will have very little chance). In addition, babies cannot be infected, who until two months do not receive their first vaccines and who until 12 months are not protected from measles, rubella or mumps.
This is important because, as a parent, if I ever had another child, I would like to know which children in your environment (cousins, friends, etc.) are not vaccinated, to know what risks you would take. It may sound bad, but it wouldn't make me too funny if my son caught an avoidable disease because someone has decided not to vaccinate his children.
That is why vaccinating becomes an act of solidarity: being all protected, almost no one can get sick from the diseases for which there is a vaccine, not even those not vaccinated.
For consistency
Millions of children die from diseases that could have been avoided if they had had access to childhood vaccines. In Spain, on the other hand, we can not only access them, but our national health system buys them so that our children can be vaccinated.
Imagine the face that would be left to a mother who has just lost her son in a poor country if someone explained to her that up there, in rich countries, people do not want to give those vaccines to their children because they believe they are bad.
The most consistent thing is to try to know the data and the situation a bit and, knowing that by not vaccinating your children you are putting them at risk, as a risk run those who do not have access to children's vaccines, take them to the pediatrician to do, as I say, the best thing they can do for your child, which is to vaccinate him to prevent major diseases.
Perhaps social security should stop subsidizing them and have each father and mother pay them out of pocket. Perhaps this would be valued more (you know, what is free seems to have no value).
Because if not vaccines, diseases come back
The anti-vaccines say that before the vaccines existed the diseases were already remitting and that, if the population had not been vaccinated, we would now be the same or even better.
This is a lie and now, unfortunately, it is beginning to see the light, because having lowered the vaccine coverage are beginning to emerge again diseases already almost eradicated.
I do not know about you, but I have a monumental “anger” as a toilet. Parents who have not vaccinated their children have been taking advantage of all the children who have been vaccinated and have explained to the four winds how healthy their children are, precisely because everyone else was vaccinated and no one could spread.
Now that the message of the groups for free vaccination (anti-vaccines) has penetrated the population and that vaccination coverage is decreasing diseases are reappearing, vertiginously increasing the cases of sick children and adults, hospital admissions, creating mass vaccination campaigns to try to curb the epidemic and protect babies, etc.
Come on, thanks to the lies of the anti-vaccine groups, health spending is increasing absurdly (because if they had been vaccinated this would not have happened) and the health of sick people and babies is being threatened, because the more people have a disease, the greater the risk of infection.
Tomorrow we will explain why it is dangerous not to vaccinate children and what are the data of some emerging diseases.
