Hot Topic
Immunize to Save Lives
Parents do a lot of things to keep their children safe. They install car safety seats, put child-proof latches on medicine cabinets, and make sure toys aren't too small to cause a choking hazard. Just as those measures help keep children healthy, vaccines protect children from illness and death associated with diseases. 
It wasn't that long ago that infants and children in the United States and all over the world died routinely as a result of infectious diseases. Thankfully, vaccines have reduced or put a stop to many of those diseases; however, those diseases still exist and can still harm people who are not vaccinated against them.
Diseases such as measles, whooping cough, and polio have been kept at bay because of vaccines. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), if vaccinations were stopped, each year about 2.7 million measles deaths worldwide could be expected.
Immunization vaccinations work because they contain a dead or weakened form of the disease which, while too weak to give the infant the disease, is strong enough to trick the body into developing antibodies. The body "thinks" it had the disease, which protects it if exposure to that disease happens.
Thanks to vaccines, most diseases prevented by vaccines are no longer common in this country. Yet even the few cases we have in the U.S. could very quickly become tens or hundreds of thousands of cases if we stopped vaccinating. Kids that are not fully vaccinated can become seriously sick and spread it through a community.
According to the CDC, vaccine-preventable diseases have many social and economic costs: sick children miss school and can cause parents to lose time from work. These diseases also result in doctor's visits, hospitalizations, and even premature deaths.
Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective public health tools available for preventing disease and death. They not only help protect vaccinated individuals, but also help protect entire communities by preventing and reducing the spread of infectious diseases.
A few important things to remember:
• If you have fallen behind on your baby's immunization schedule, it is possible to catch up.
• Keep a record of all shots.
• You should always read the Vaccination Information Sheet for each shot provided by your healthcare professional.
For more information the importance of immunizations, go to www.cdc.gov or www.aap.org.
For a recommended schedule of immunizations for children from 0-6 years, click here: Immunization Schedule 0-6 years.pdf