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.
Talk to your child’s doctor if you have questions or concerns about vaccines for your child.
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 to offer. HOWEVER, you don’t want them to be lacking the protection vaccines provide if they ever do need it.
Think of it this way: You always make sure to buckle your child in his car seat even though you don’t expect to be in an accident.
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 defences to help safely develop immunity to disease.
Your child is exposed to thousands of germs every day in his environment. This happens through the food he eats, the air he breathes, and things he puts in his mouth.
Babies are born with immune systems that can fight most germs, but there are some deadly diseases they can’t handle. That’s why they need vaccines to strengthen their immune system.
Vaccines use very small amounts of antigens to help your child’s immune system recognize and learn to fight serious diseases. Antigens are parts of germs that cause the body’s immune system to go to work.
Think of it this way: Getting a disease or getting a vaccine can both give you future protection from that disease. The difference is that with the disease you have to get sick to get that protection. With the vaccine, you don’t.
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 the 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 to prevent contamination by bacteria during the vaccine manufacturing process. Resides in the body naturally (more in the body than vaccines). (Also, found in the 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.
Some websites may claim that ingredients are harmful, but you have to make sure as you surf for vaccine information to seek information from credible sources.
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, the ministry of health 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.
Watch this 6-minute video to see how a vaccine is developed, approved, manufactured; added to the schedule, and how the vaccine’s safety continues to be monitored.
Mild side effects are expected
Like any medicine, vaccines can cause side effects such as a low-grade fever, or pain and redness at the injection site. Mild reactions go away within a few days on their own.
Severe, long-lasting side effects are extremely rare.
Think of it this way: There is a 1 in a MILLION chance of getting a serious reaction to a vaccine.
Combination and multiple vaccines are safe
Receiving combination vaccines and/or multiple vaccines at the same time is safe and offers protection against multiple diseases during one office visit.
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.
If you delay, reject, or skip doses of vaccines
It can take weeks for a vaccine to help your baby make protective disease-fighting antibodies, and some vaccines require multiple doses to provide the 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 travelling abroad
- on playgrounds, or even
- at the grocery store
Your child can catch diseases from people who don’t have any symptoms. You can’t always tell who is contagious.