Thanks to mass vaccination, over the past hundred years, doctors have managed to significantly reduce the number of diseases caused by various dangerous infections. However, among modern parents there are more and more opponents of vaccines. To decide whether to allow doctors to vaccinate your children, it is worth examining the pros and cons of vaccination.
Arguments for vaccinations
Vaccinations are designed for the mass health of the nation and make it possible to develop general immunity in most of the country's population. As a result, the possibility of the rapid spread of such dangerous infections as measles, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, tuberculosis, etc., is reduced. At the same time, it is important that the number of vaccinated people reaches 70%. For some diseases, the threshold for effective vaccination is 90%.
The dramatic reduction in the number of people carrying infectious diseases guarantees a very low likelihood of an epidemic. Thus, mass vaccination is the most reliable way to prevent epidemic infectious diseases. Of course, many of these diseases have become very rare in the modern world, but their causative agents are still found in the environment. Therefore, a massive refusal to vaccinate can lead to new outbreaks of infectious diseases.
For example, in the nineties of the last century, an epidemic of diphtheria arose in the countries of the former USSR. The main cause of the epidemic was the collapse of the health care system and the resulting appearance of a large number of people unvaccinated from this disease. The total number of cases was over 150,000, of which approximately 5,000 died.
Vaccination is also very important when traveling to another region where an infectious disease is common. A vaccination given in advance will protect against infection with this infection or the development of severe forms of this disease.
In addition to epidemic infectious diseases, there are non-epidemic infectious diseases, the causative agents of which live in the external environment or are carried by animals. Such diseases include, for example, tetanus, rabies and tick-borne encephalitis. Vaccination against these diseases is intended to protect the health of the individual, not to the general public.
It should be borne in mind that refusal from preventive vaccinations can limit the access of children to organized groups: boarding houses, sanatoriums, health and sports camps. Adult unvaccinated citizens may be denied admission to military universities and when hiring in some specialties.
Arguments against vaccinations
Like any drug, vaccines can cause side effects. Most often they are weakly expressed: for a while, the body temperature rises and there is a slight soreness at the injection site. Some live vaccines can cause a reaction similar to the mild form of the disease that was inoculated against.
However, sometimes the administration of the vaccine provokes anaphylactic shock, which can lead to disability or even death. It should be noted that cases of such complications are very rare, and the incidence of severe side effects in vaccines is the same as in conventional drugs. To reduce the likelihood of developing severe complications after vaccinations, you should not get vaccinated during illness and if there are contraindications.
