As a retired pediatrician and a grandparent, I believe that vaccines are essential, safe and lifesaving. I am alarmed by the rise of the anti-vaccination movement and fear that as vaccination rates decline, the life threatening diseases that I saw early in the course of my 43 years practicing general pediatrics will again endanger us all.
The current epidemic of measles in several US states needs to be a wake-up call about the importance of the Measles vaccine. Some may think of measles as a minor illness but I recall the child I cared for as a pediatric resident in the 1970s with subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE). My patient resided in a chronic care facility with this fatal, brain destroying complication of measles. Though most children with measles will recover one of every 1000 infected will be hospitalized with complications like pneumonia or encephalitis and a few will die.
Some opponents of vaccination say Polio vaccine is no longer necessary. I was a young child in the 1950s when the public swimming pool in my apartment complex was closed due to a polio outbreak and I remember the fear my parents experienced when one of my playmates was infected and developed paralytic symptoms. I recall their relief when I was able to receive first the Salk and then the Sabin polio vaccines.
As a pediatric intern I became adept at doing spinal taps because a child with an unexplained high fever might have meningitis, a bacterial infection of the nervous system that can kill or leave a child with lifelong neurologic disability or deafness. But with the introduction of the HIB and Pneumococcal vaccines in the 1980s, meningitis as well as life endangering infections like epiglottitis and sepsis went from being common to rare in children thanks to these vaccines.
Chicken pox is an infection that some parents think of as a minor illness. I recall a child with chicken pox that became secondarily infected with staph bacteria and was left with extensive permanent scarring of his chest and back. The Varicella vaccine to prevent chicken pox was introduced in the 1990s. My own infant daughter caught chicken pox when she was a few months old. She was too young to receive the vaccine which is given at the first birthday. I recall how miserable she was when she developed a bacterial infection of the pox lesions in her diaper area. Fortunately she recovered fully with a course of antibiotics. I saw only a handful of chicken pox cases in my office after the vaccine became available and I hate to think chicken pox could make a comeback if parents refuse this immunization.
Recently our federal government health officials have raised questions about the need for Hepatitis B vaccination at birth. Newborn hepatitis B infection has essentially been eliminated with early immunization. Omission of this vaccine will cause some children to acquire chronic incurable liver disease.
The anti-vaccination movement is also challenging the need for Rotavirus vaccine and prenatal and infant RSV immunization. During my years of practice approximately half of the children I needed to hospitalize had either rotavirus caused diarrhea and dehydration or bronchiolitis caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Most infants with these infections will recover with modern medical care including supplemental oxygen or intravenous fluid therapy. Some infants, especially those born prematurely will be in serious danger from RSV. Even children treated at home will not have an easy time with these infections. A child with RSV will cough for weeks and struggle to eat and sleep. A child with rotavirus will have a nasty diaper rash that refuses to heal despite countless diaper changes.
Anti-vaccination people will tell you that vaccines have dangerous side effects. They will falsely claim that vaccines cause autism. Countless scientific studies show this to be untrue. Although a child may experience brief fever or fussiness after vaccination, in all my years of practice I did not see a single severe adverse reaction to any vaccine I administered.
I believe that the single most important thing I did for my patients at their well child visits was to ensure that they were fully immunized!