Addressing Common Concerns
Most parents choose to vaccinate their children according to the recommended schedule. But some parents may still have questions about vaccines, and getting answers they can trust may be hard.
With so much information—and sometimes incorrect information—available today, learning the facts before making health decisions is very important.
How vaccines work: preventing diseases
The diseases vaccines prevent can be dangerous, or even deadly.
Statistically, the chances of your child getting diseases such as measles, pertussis, or another vaccine-preventable disease might be low, and your child might never need the protection vaccines offer. HOWEVER, you don’t want them to be lacking the protection vaccines provide if they ever do need it.
Strengthening your baby’s immune system
Immunity is the body’s way of preventing disease. When your baby is born, his/her immune system is not fully developed, which can put him/her at greater risk for infections. Vaccines reduce your child’s risk of infection by working with his/her body’s natural defenses to help safely develop immunity to disease.
Vaccine ingredients
All ingredients of vaccines play necessary roles either in making the vaccine, triggering the body to develop immunity, or in ensuring that the final product is safe and effective. Some of these include:
- Adjuvants help boost the body’s response to vaccine. (Also found in antacids, buffered aspirin, antiperspirants, etc.)
- Stabilizers help keep vaccine effective after manufactured (Also found in foods such as Jell-O® and resides in the body naturally.)
- Formaldehyde is used prevent contamination by bacteria during the vaccine manufacturing process. Resides in body naturally (more in body than vaccines). (Also, found in environment, preservatives, and household products.)
- Thimerosal is also used during the manufacturing process but is no longer an ingredient in any vaccine except multi-dose vials of the flu vaccine. Single dose vials of the flu vaccine are available as an alternative. No reputable scientific studies have found an association between thimerosal in vaccines and autism.
Vaccines are safe
The safety of vaccines is often a topic of media stories and blog postings. This attention may make you wonder, “How do I know vaccines are safe?”
Before a vaccine is ever given to people, FDA oversees extensive lab testing of the vaccine that can take several years to make sure it is safe and effective. After the lab, testing in people begins, and it can take several more years before the clinical studies are complete and the vaccine is licensed.
Once a vaccine is licensed, FDA, CDC, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other federal agencies routinely monitor its use and investigate any potential safety concerns.
Mild side effects are expected
Like any medicine, vaccines can cause side effects such as a low-grade fever, or pain and redness at injection site. Mild reactions go away within a few days on their own.
Severe, long lasting side effects are extremely rare.
If you have questions or concerns about a vaccine, talk with your child’s doctor. Learn about the safety of each recommended vaccine.
Combination and multiple vaccines are safe
Giving several shots at the same time means fewer office visits. This saves you time and money, and can be less traumatic for the child.
A decision not to immunize your child also involves risk and could put your child and others who come into contact with him or her at risk of contracting a potentially deadly disease.
Why your child should get vaccinated
Vaccines can prevent infectious diseases that once killed or harmed many infants, children, and adults. Without vaccines, your child is at risk for getting seriously ill and suffering pain, disability, and even death from diseases like measles and whooping cough.
It is always better to prevent a disease than to treat it after it occurs.
- Vaccination is a highly effective, safe and easy way to help keep your family healthy.
- On-time vaccination throughout childhood is essential because it helps provide immunity before children are exposed to potentially life-threatening diseases.
- Vaccines are tested to ensure that they are safe and effective for children to receive at the recommended ages.
CDC Vaccine Information Statements (VISs) explain both the benefits and risks of a vaccine. VISs are available for each vaccine.
If you don’t follow CDC’s recommended schedule
If you delay, reject, or skip doses of vaccines
For parents who have questions about the schedule or wonder why it’s so important to follow, here are six reasons why you should vaccinate your child on time.
It can take weeks for a vaccine to help your baby make protective disease-fighting antibodies, and some vaccines require multiple doses to provide best protection. If you wait until you think your child could be exposed to a serious illness – like when he starts daycare, travels abroad, or during a disease outbreak – there may not be enough time for the vaccine to work.
If you wait to vaccinate
Young children can be exposed to vaccine preventable diseases, from any number of people or places, including
- parents
- brothers or sisters
- visitors to their home
- people returning from traveling abroad
- on playgrounds, or even
- at the grocery store
If you don’t vaccinate, know your responsibilities
Your child can catch diseases from people who don’t have any symptoms. You can’t always tell who is contagious.
It’s your responsibility
- To inform your child’s school, childcare facility, and other caregivers about your child’s vaccination status.
- Notify the doctor’s office, urgent care facility, ambulance personnel, or emergency room staff that your child has not been fully vaccinated. They need to consider the possibility that your child may have a vaccine-preventable disease so that they can treat your child correctly as quickly as possible.
- Isolate your child so disease during an outbreak does not spread to your child and others especially infants too young to be fully vaccinated.
- Look up the countries where you will travel on the CDC travelers’ website before traveling. Travelers are exposed to diseases during travel or by others that traveled and returned to the U.S.
