Author: Kathiann Kowalski / Source: Science News for Students
Kids’ cuts and scrapes are rarely a big deal. But one six-year-old boy in Oregon nearly died after getting a cut on his forehead while playing outside.
Six days after the accident, his jaw began clenching. Muscle spasms wrenched his arms. His neck and back arched out of control. Then the boy had trouble breathing. Emergency medical personnel airlifted the child from the family farm to a hospital. Doctors quickly figured out the problem: tetanus.The bacteria that cause tetanus are everywhere, notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga. Luckily, there’s a vaccine that can prevent tetanus. But the boy’s parents wouldn’t let him get it.
As a result, the child became so sick he had to spend 57 days in a hospital. For more than a month of that time, he needed a breathing machine. After the hospital, he had to spend 17 more days in a health-recovery center. The treatment was costly: $811,929. And that didn’t cover the cost of airlifting him to the hospital when his symptoms turned deadly.
Eventually, the boy got better. Yet even after doctors explained the tiny risks and huge benefits of vaccines, his parents refused follow-up doses of vaccine for their son.
Doctors described his case in the March 8 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
“Vaccines are safe. Vaccines save lives,” says Peter Hotez. “They are the most effective public health technology ever invented.” He’s a pediatrician and vaccine scientist at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. Both are in Houston.
Most people gladly get vaccines for themselves and their children. Yet a small share of people says no. In fact, the percent that turns them down has been climbing. That is putting more children at risk. And it endangers the health of others, from babies to cancer patients and more.
“We’ve reached a point where so many children are not being vaccinated, that we’re seeing a return of dangerous and even deadly infectious disease,” Hotez says.
Protection from disease
Vaccines work by arming the immune system to fight off a disease. “A vaccine gives your body a little sample of what a virus or bacterium looks like,” explains Danielle Koenig. She’s a health educator with the Washington Department of Health in Olympia. A vaccine prompts the immune system to make germ-killing antibodies. Later, if you’re exposed to those germs, “your body has those antibodies ready to go.”
But that’s not all. Many vaccines help protect other people from infections. As more and more people get a vaccine, the disease has fewer people it can infect. And that’s the first step in slowing or even stopping its spread. Public health experts call this herd immunity.
Herd immunity works like a shield or force field to protect those people who are most at risk because they cannot be vaccinated, Koenig says. “The more people who get vaccinated, the stronger that field is.” On the flip side, “if not enough people are immunized, that force field breaks down and there are holes in it.”
1:
2: When few people are vaccinated (shown in yellow, left), a highly contagious disease can still quickly spread (red, at right) to unvaccinated people.
3: When most people get a vaccine (yellow, at left), they greatly limit how effectively an infection can spread (red, at right) within a population. Their ability to protect others is known as “herd immunity.”
Measles is a disease that causes high fevers, coughing, a sore throat and an ugly rash. One or two in every 1,000 people who get measles will die from it, the CDC notes. Many more will end up with pneumonia, brain infections and nervous-system damage, such as deafness. Measles also makes it hard to fight off certain other diseases for the next two to three years.
“Measles is a very dangerous disease,” observes Jonathan McCullers. He is a pediatrician at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis. He’s also a faculty member at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in the same city.
In contrast, “the vaccine against measles is very safe and very effective. One dose provides protection in about 93 percent of individuals,” McCullers says. A second, booster dose bumps the protection up to 97 percent. And, he notes, “Very few side effects occur.”
Herd immunity also protects individuals who can’t be vaccinated. This includes babies who are too young to get vaccines. It also counts cancer patients and others with weak immune systems. About one in eight U.S. children and teens depend on herd immunity to protect them from measles. This also includes about 3 in every 100 people for whom a vaccine might not offer full protection. And it counts children whose parents say no to vaccines. These people can still become infected. But they’re far less likely to get sick because of herd immunity.
Measles is only one of many diseases for which there is a vaccine. Another is pertussis (Pur-TUSS-is), which triggers a severe hacking cough. (In babies it is known as whooping cough, for the sound of their coughs.) This infection can cause pneumonia, convulsions, brain disease and breathing problems.
A tetanus vaccine could have prevented the disease that almost killed the Oregon boy. Other diseases that a vaccine could prevent: diphtheria (Dip-THEER-ee-uh), which makes it hard to breathe and can lead to heart failure. There’s also rotavirus, which causes severe and sometimes deadly diarrhea. Vaccinations can prevent chickenpox, which produces fever, a rash and sometimes serious nerve damage in later life (known as shingles). Vaccinations can also prevent Rubella (Rue-BEL-lah), which can trigger fetal deaths in pregnant women.
And then there’s the yearly vaccine against flu. This common infection kills tens of thousands of people in the United States each year. Teens also need vaccines for human papillomavirus (Paa-pil-LOH-muh-vy-rus) and meningococcal (Meh-NIN-jo-KOK-ul) disease. The first of these can lead to cancer. The second attacks the nervous system and blood stream.
Diseases most people don’t have to get, now, thanks to vaccines:
There are some 150 different human papillomaviruses…
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