Spokane7
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August 3, 2010 in Features
Painful reminders about vaccines
I think people sometimes forget that many of the diseases for which we now have vaccines – like measles, whooping cough (pertussis) and polio – can be deadly.
A woman I know in her mid-60s brought this to mind recently. When she was 11, she suddenly felt weak in both of her legs while walking home from school. She had to be carried home by a friend. She had polio.
At one point, she had so much trouble breathing that her family was facing sending her away to use an iron lung – a machine to assist with breathing. She was fortunate because she was able to walk normally again after only a year.
This same woman told me of her sister having pertussis so badly that there was serious concern about whether she would survive.
Other vaccine-preventable diseases may not be as deadly, but can leave a person disfigured or disabled for life.
Even if a child survives the measles (rubeola), it may leave them blind or visually impaired. There were at least 82 cases of measles in British Columbia this past spring.
Women who catch rubella (German measles) during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy are at risk of the child being born with heart, hearing or other defects and even blindness. A test for immunity or a vaccine prior to pregnancy can prevent this.
Fortunately, there have been very few cases of this disease in recent years and those have been mainly in people who were exposed in other countries.
Vaccines have been proven successful in preventing diseases, so I absolutely recommend immunization whenever possible. For example, Hepatitis B and HPV vaccines reduce the risk of cancers caused by those viruses.
Our 2-year-old daughter is current on her vaccines. She just had her latest booster shot and was done crying in less than two minutes.
She had some local pain and swelling where she got the shot, which is normal. After a few minutes with her “froggy” ice pack, she was fine. I much prefer this to the worry, suffering and complications that vaccine-preventable diseases can cause.
There are times when a child should not get vaccinated. It is rare, but sometimes a child may have a severe allergic reaction to a vaccine. If this has happened, the child should not get that vaccine again.
Sometimes an ingredient in the vaccine or the manufacturing process causes an allergic reaction. If your child is allergic to alum, 2-phenoxyethanol, yeast, thimerosal, mouse protein, gelatin, neomycin, streptomycin, polymyxin B, latex, chicken or eggs, be sure to tell the doctor before she gets any vaccinations.
In some cases, there are alternative formulations available for children with an allergy. If your child has cancer, a disease that affects the immune system or is being treated with drugs that affect the immune system, there are some vaccinations that he should not get and some that you should talk about with the doctor.
The school year will be starting soon. It will be time for flu (influenza) vaccines and a good time for vaccination updates for children and adults.
Now there is a pertussis vaccine available for adults because most cases of whooping cough are actually passed to children by adults around them. Vaccinating children for influenza protects them and helps reduce the disease for adults at home.
The more people who are vaccinated within our community and state, the less risks there are for all of us from any of these diseases.
For overall child immunizations, Idaho ranks 50th in the nation at 57.6 percent; Washington is at 73.7 percent, compared to the national average of 77.2 percent.
The number of Spokane County schoolchildren whose parents signed an immunization exemption rose from 5.4 percent in 2002-2003 to 6.8 percent in 2007-2008 (exemptions are higher in Spokane than the statewide average).
And right now, California is dealing with what may be the largest pertussis outbreak in more than 50 years. We can do better.
If you or your child has not had any vaccinations, it is never too late to start. Some require only one dose and others a series of doses to establish immunity to the disease. Some vaccinations (such as tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis) can sometimes be given with only one combined shot.
You can talk with your health care provider about how to begin and get up to date on important vaccinations. Staying on schedule can make all the difference in the world.
Dr. Alisa Hideg is a family medicine physician at Group Health’s Riverfront Medical Center in Spokane. Her column appears every other Tuesday in the Today section. Send your questions and comments to drhideg@ghc.org.
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AnneS on August 03 at 2:08 a.m.
“Sometimes an ingredient in the vaccine or the manufacturing process causes an allergic reaction. If your child is allergic to alum, 2-phenoxyethanol, yeast, thimerosal, mouse protein, gelatin, neomycin, streptomycin, polymyxin B, latex, chicken or eggs, be sure to tell the doctor before she gets any vaccinations.”
That’s pretty unrealistic - most of those alergies you wouldn’t know about in an infant. Additionally, thimerosal is mercury, and a very potent neurotoxin. It should not be injected into an infant (or anyone for that matter).
We need to shift this conversation from “if you don’t get your vaccines you will die” to “how can we change the schedule to improve safety, change the vaccines to improve the safety, and test children before vaccinating to improve safety”.
Nick42 on August 03 at 12:37 p.m.
Please, enough with the thimerosal = mercury scare tactics. There is no evidence of any harm caused to anyone’s neurological development by thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative (not pure mercury as your comment would suggest). If you are aware of such evidence, please cite it.
The “conversation,” as it were, should really be about whether we want to return to the days that Dr. Hideg talks about here. People should stop listening to the unscientific hyperbole linking vaccinations to every ill under the sun and instead focus on the fact that vaccinations have improved the lives of millions and there is evidence to prove it.
They are safe, relatively inexpensive and highly effective. There is, of course, some risk with them, but there is risk in simply walking out your door every day. Life is about weighing risk vs. reward and vaccines offer a huge reward for a minuscule amount of risk.
Vaccines save lives.
cindylovesjohnwf on August 03 at 1:26 p.m.
Anyone that does not consider the poisons that they are forcing our children to take in these, so called, vaccines is not all that reputable to me. With the rise in Autism especially related to the rise in vaccines children are having to take. It is not an acceptable risk to me. Prove to me that the risk is worth any child’s life,, You can’t because the risk is far too great and I do not trust the government to help anyone but themselves here.
Vaccines take more lives than they save.
SugarShane on August 03 at 9:01 p.m.
Like the terrible pandemic of H1N1? Oh yeah, more scare tactics to line the pockets of vaccines distributors. If the makers of these vaccines were fully liable for any negative outcomes that might occur, I might step up and let them inject my child. Since they are afforded numerous protections and are free from any liability, it gives me cause to wonder; what are they so afraid of?
Mickeyamc on August 04 at 10:39 a.m.
So, if I have a kid who has leukemia and cannot get vaccines and my kid gets the measles from your non-vaccinated kid, and ends up blind, can I hold you fully liable for my kid’s blindness?
How many times do the scientists have to say that they don’t know what causes autism, but that they are pretty sure it’s not vaccines? In fact, one of the few things they have cited as apparently increasing the chance of a kid being autistic is if both of the parents are scientists. That certainly leans towards a genetic cause.
Autism may be on the rise because we are just better at identifying it now. That is another thing that researchers are trying to figure out.
I understand that it’s frustrating not to know what causes autism and it’s frustrating not to know why there is an increase in it, but you can’t just make things up in your head and decide they are true.
The reason people invented vaccines for these diseases is because they kill and disable people. Vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective and if 1000 kids don’t die and are not disabled from a disease and 1 kid is injured because he has a rare allergy to an ingredient in a vaccine, I’m OK with that because there are 1000 kids who are alive and healthy. Sorry to make it a numbers game, but that’s what it is. The benefits to the many outweighs the benefits to the few.