During the last week in April, the world celebrates one of the most powerful tools for health: the use of vaccines to protect people of all ages against disease.

Immunisation prevents about three million deaths every year. Failure to vaccinate leaves you and your children vulnerable to diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella that have severe complications such as pneumonia, encephalitis, blindness, diarrhoea, ear infections, congenital rubella syndrome (if a woman becomes infected with rubella in early pregnancy) and death. Vaccinations also help prevent meningitis, hepatitis B, certain cancers, severe diarrhoeal disease in children, tetanus and yellow fever. Yet many people refuse to get vaccinated or vaccinate their children because of a lack of knowledge.

Myth busters

    • Better hygiene and sanitation won’t prevent all diseases, as many infections spread regardless of how clean we are. If people are not vaccinated, diseases that have become uncommon, such as polio and measles, will quickly reappear.
    • Vaccines are safe. Most reactions are minor and temporary, such as a sore arm or mild fever. Serious side-effects are extremely rare and are carefully monitored and investigated. The benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the risk and many more injuries and deaths would occur without vaccines.
    • Influenza is not just a nuisance, it’s a serious disease that kills 300 000 to 500 000 people every year. Pregnant women, small children, elderly people and anyone with a chronic condition, such as asthma or heart disease, are at higher risk for severe infection and death. Flu vaccinations reduce your chance of getting any of the three most prevalent strains circulating in any given season as well as your chance of infecting others.
    • Vaccination against a disease is better than becoming immune after getting a disease. While vaccines interact with the immune system to produce an immune response similar to the natural infection, they avoid the potential complications. Becoming immune through natural infection might cause mental retardation ranging from haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), birth defects from rubella, liver cancer from the hepatitis B virus or death from measles.
    • Scientific evidence shows that giving a child several vaccines at once has no adverse effect. It means fewer clinic visits and the recommended vaccinations are more likely to be completed on schedule. In addition, when it’s possible to have a combined vaccination, e.g. for measles, mumps and rubella, fewer injections are necessary. The combined vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough and the vaccine against poliomyelitis do not cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) as some think.
    • There is no evidence of a link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism or autistic disorders. The 1998 study which raised concerns about a possible link between the vaccine and autism was later found to be seriously flawed, and the paper was retracted by the journal that published it.

Visit your doctor or nearest clinic to make sure your and your children’s vaccinations up to date.

 

Sources

 

http://www.gov.za
http://www.who.int