Should Vaccinations Be Required Prior To Children Attending School?

By Author: Henry Ford
Total Articles: 189
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Vaccines are most important and cost friendly medical interventions, designed to prevent diseases for those who receive them and reduce on further transmission and risk of diseases to the communities. Vaccination is known to have been used back in the history of the world before the current medical discoveries. It was first documented in the year 1796, and Smallpox was the first infectious disease that termination was attempted on by basically inoculating patients with other strains of linked infections. This term vaccination was at very first time used by an English physician Edward Jenner referring to inoculating a patient with a destabilized strain of the disease. The word vaccination originated from the Latin word vacca meaning a cow, named after the first ever vaccine which was derived from a virus infecting cows (cowpox virus). This weakened cowpox virus produced a degree of immunity to smallpox virus at the period when it was deadly and highly infectious disease.
Why vaccination should be a necessity to children?
Vaccination is very important not only to children prior to attending schools but to the current ...
... medical science. It has greatly improved the health life of many people, vaccination led to elimination and eradication of deadly diseases, such as smallpox. The mandatory polio vaccines to the children below five years have assisted in the near-eradication of polio in the current world. Schools and other care center facilitate the possible transmission of diseases and infections, as children are exposed to close contact. When children who are not vaccinated are admitted to schools and these care centers they are highly susceptible to disease outbreaks than those children who are vaccinated against such infections. Therefore children must undergo vaccination prior to attending schools as it has been a tradition in most states in the United States. For your child to participate in any public park, public school, and even to swim in a public pool in the United States he or she must be vaccinated against all communicable disease. They are therefore, greatest beneficiary of vaccination programs, because they are most susceptible population to any kind of communicable diseases, given their close contact in schools and other public social places. Parents and guardian, who object a protective mechanism for children under their care, have no absolute right to make other immunized children sick. They should realize that their choice not only distresses them, but the society at large (Durbach, 2002).
A research done in the United States found out that unvaccinated children would enhance the danger of measles in protected and vaccinated children. Children exempted from vaccination had high chances of contracting measles and pertussis than those immunized. Measles was found to be 35 folds greater in unvaccinated children than the immunized children. The research showed that a society with lower immunization rates had elevated rates of transmissions among immunized children than those with higher society extensive immunization rates. Parents and guardian they should trust and respect research vaccinations and doctors, through these vaccinations chances of disease infections to a certain population have greatly decreased with a rising number of vaccinated people. We have to remind those parents who do not remember or those who were not around in 1952 when polio crippled more than 58,000 people in only one summer season ((Lee, 2000). Diseases like polio are not far from us if we do not take vaccination seriously as a protective mechanism to our children. Those who opt not to immunize their children prior to attending schools have never seen the effects of now dormant diseases like polio and smallpox to their neighbors, city or in their country.
The decision of parents objecting vaccination process to their children has a collective impact. In a place or in a community where most people are immunized, the possibility of a person or a member getting exposed to infections is very low. Thus, some individual can decide not to be vaccinated as they are benefiting from the high immunization rate which reduces the possibility of infections to individuals with no exposure to any risk associated to vaccine. Any individual who objects vaccination by this logic therefore is referred to as ‘free rider’, however, if many individuals in the community choose the same approach then the immunity of the community will be at risk of not being effective enough to prevent the disease outbreaks, those immunized will equally be at risk of being infected since vaccines are not absolutely efficient (Salmon et al., 1999).
Vaccination should be encouraged to get rid of epidemics from commencing in schools and other public places like care centers and swimming pools. Countries should also get prepared against biological weapons which are dependant on vaccination process. With vaccination of children the source of biological weapons will be sealed. Therefore vaccination remains a valid avenue to end terrorism by use biological weapons.
Setbacks facing vaccination programs in the world
Vaccines are known to have slight negative reactions to a small percentage of children when given shots for the purposes of immunization. A small population of children when immunized with shots to prevent diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, measles, and whooping cough tend to experience trivial effects. However, the fact is that the benefits of these vaccine shots greatly outweigh the unlikely risk. Where vaccination programs have failed, many people continue to perish due to vaccine-preventable diseases. Polio is causing disabilities in communities in spite of public sanitation. In Russia for instance, diphtheria epidemic has been experienced due to weakening of their immunization programs. Conservatives have opposed the immunization programs doubting the perfections of vaccines in relation to safety, efficacy, and the need for vaccinations. Other religions believe that injection of any man made material vaccine for this matter would go against the holiness and sanctity of the body and should not be a mandatory to all children (Colley, 1994).
Governments rarely talk about the other side of vaccination or the negative effects of vaccination. By the governments opening up to the public and disclosing how the benefits of vaccination outweighs the possible risk that in itself would be encouraging the public to undergo the process. But as long as the governments take the issue of vaccination as sacred, parents will continue to remain in the dark as to whether vaccination is a better decision for their children or a disaster that will destroy the lives of their children. Parent must be given facts by the responsible governments on why vaccination is important to children through civic education and other government initiatives. The government should not impose vaccination policies to the public but give them space and to choose what is right for them.

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