Immunizations

I chose this topic for one specific reason. While growing up, I received all of my immunizations and my parents made sure that everything was kept up to date. When I was a teenager, I met a family who got to see the side effects of those immunizations. Their first son received all his immunizations at birth and when it came time to receive the few shots for starting school, things went wrong. At five years old he became paralyzed from the waste down and lost most function in his hands and arms. Daily tasks could no longer be performed on his own. His speech was impaired and most times it was hard for me to understand what he was saying. His mother spoke passionately about how she no longer believed that the vaccines, that the government was requiring, were safe and her youngest son never received a single vaccine. I know that immunizations are important to make sure that we do not have any more outbreaks of certain diseases and illnesses, but do we really know the long term affects of these shots? There are always side effects to every drug and shot, but could these side effects be stopped if more testing was done, and more time was spent on making these drugs and vaccines safer?

While thinking about immunization in the US I decided to look into a few other countries to see if they had the same immunizations or if they thought differently about it. First country that I looked into was China. I found that China basically immunized their babies just the same as the US does. I decided to try to find a country that was different from my own. India was actually the country that caught my attention. Starting in 1975 India started the Expanded Programme on Immunization which provided immunization against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, typhoid and childhood tuberculosis. In 1985 they renamed their program to the Universal Immunization Programme where the measles vaccine was added and the typhoid vaccine was taken out. “India’s Immunization Program is one of the largest in the world in terms of quantities of vaccines used, numbers of beneficiaries, and the numbers of immunization sessions organized, the geographical spread and diversity of areas covered” (http://www.whoindia.org/en/Section6/Section284/Section286_506.htm).

Ways this information will impact my future work is quite simple. I now will understand when a child is not immunized and just as always will respect the choices that a parent makes. It takes reading and thinking about certain areas that bring back memories of something you would not think about. I really liked this assignment because it reminded me of the importance of knowing the facts and considering all of your options even when it comes to basic things as “required” immunizations.