A Healthy Start: Reasons to Vaccinate Your Child
August is National Immunization Awareness Month – a reminder that we all need vaccines right from the start and throughout our lives. Immunization gives parents the safe, proven power to protect their children from 14 serious and sometimes deadly diseases before they turn 2 years old.
Children who don’t receive recommended vaccines are at risk of getting the disease or illness, and of having a severe case. Every dose of every vaccine is important to protect your child and others in the community from infectious diseases. Talk to your or other health care professional to make sure your child is up to date on all the vaccines he or she needs.
Today’s childhood vaccines protect against serious and potentially life-threatening diseases, including polio, measles, whooping cough and chickenpox.
There are many important reasons to make sure your child is vaccinated:
• Immunizations can protect your child from 14 serious diseases
• Vaccination is very safe and effective
• Immunizations can protect others you care about
• Immunization can save your family time and money
• Immunization protects future generations
When children are not vaccinated, they are at increased risk and can spread diseases to others in their family and community – including babies who are too young to be fully vaccinated, and people with weakened immune systems due to cancer and other health conditions.
Even before your child is born, it’s important that pregnant women receive the whooping cough vaccine called Tdap during each pregnancy. By doing so, the mother’s body creates protective antibodies and passes some of them to her baby before birth. These antibodies give babies some short-term protection against whooping cough until they can begin building their own immunity through childhood vaccinations. Antibody levels are highest about two weeks after getting the vaccine. The vaccine is recommended in the third trimester, preferably between the 27th and 36th week of pregnancy, so the mother gives her baby the most protection (antibodies).
The amount of whooping cough antibodies a person has decreases over time. This is why women need a whooping cough vaccine during each pregnancy so high levels of protective antibodies are transferred to each baby.
Download the 2014 Recommended Immunizations for Birth through Age 6 and talk to your pediatrician to make sure your child is fully immunized to keep him or her healthy.
Content provided by the CDC.
