Vaccinate? There should be no Question

Vaccinate? There should be no Question.

As a child, my parents never thought twice about whether or not my siblings and I would get our vaccinations, we just got them. I don’t know if my mother’s decision was in part because she was a nurse or if it was just the right thing to do as a parent. But as an adult, I’m thankful she made the decision to vaccinate us. I wonder how these non-vaccinated children will feel about their parent’s decision not to immunize them when they are adults?

Not immunizing children has an impact on the child and the family. A 2014 study from the University of Colorado School of Medicine stated every year, 30,000 people on average die of vaccine preventable illnesses, almost all of them adults. Amy Parker is an adult whose health-nut parents did not vaccinate her. She contracted many communicable diseases as an adult, including vaccine preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, chickenpox and human papillomavirus. Thankfully, Amy survived all of her illnesses.

Today, she has children of her own and her personal experience as a non-vaccinated adult is what prompts her to vaccinate her children and herself. Amy states she knows far more adults and children who suffer from complications of preventable childhood illnesses than those who suffer complications from vaccines. What is of utmost importance to Amy is if she did not vaccinate her
children she would knowingly be exposing them to childhood illnesses, which she states is cruel.

In the midst of all the controversy that exists around vaccinations  I, like Amy made the decision to have my children receive all of their vaccinations. I made this decision because I too was thinking about their future health status, their future as older children in school.

Pediatr Neonatal Nurs Open J. 2015; 2(1): e3-e4. doi: 10.17140/PNNOJ-2-e002