Issue
Number 358
January 9, 2003
UNPROTECTED PEOPLE: Stories of
people who have suffered or died from vaccine-preventable diseases
Story #52:
AS THE NEW YEAR BEGINS,
A PARENT EXPRESSES GRATITUDE FOR IMMUNIZATION
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The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC)
publishes articles about people who have suffered or died from
vaccine-preventable diseases and occasionally devotes an "IAC EXPRESS" issue
to such an article. This is the 52nd in our series.
This Unprotected People article is based on an opinion piece written by
Christine Roberts, the parent of a child chronically infected with hepatitis
B. It appeared in the "Billings Gazette" on January 1, 2003, as well as in
other newspapers.
Ms. Roberts is a volunteer with Parents of Kids with Infectious Diseases (PKIDS),
a parent group that supports families whose children have been affected by
viral hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, and other diseases, and educates the public about
effective disease prevention practices. Ms. Roberts's article is reprinted
here courtesy of PKIDS.
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THE POWER OF VACCINE: COUNT IMMUNIZATIONS AMONG BLESSINGS
As my family counts its blessings this holiday season, the millions of
children in developing countries who suffer from diseases that have
nearly disappeared in the United States are never far from my thoughts.
All I need to do is look across the table to know the value of immunizations
in America.
According to a joint report by UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and
the World Bank, more than 2 million children die every year from diseases
such as measles, whooping cough (pertussis), tuberculosis, and tetanus--all
of which can be prevented by vaccines.
In the United States, parents rarely have to watch their children die of
diphtheria or measles because of our near universal childhood vaccination
program. Other infectious diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of babies
and children elsewhere in the world now pose only minor threats to our
children.
Safeguarding children
As the parent of a child chronically infected with hepatitis B, I marvel at
the power of immunization to safeguard children. My daughter was born in
China and did not have the good fortune to be immunized and protected from a
virus that can cause lifelong liver disease. After our daughter arrived
home, we discovered she was infected with hepatitis B, a virus that has
infected about 60 percent of people in China and causes chronic or long-term
infections in about 10 percent of the population there.
This infection is no stranger to America. The hepatitis B virus has infected
one in 20 Americans. About 1.25 million Americans--equivalent to the
population of Maine--are chronically infected. About 20 percent to 30
percent of them were infected as children, according to the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. When newborns and young children are
infected, their infections are more likely to become lifelong due to
their immature immune systems. Widespread immunization of newborns in
America has dramatically reduced chronic infection rates. But the news is
not so good for my daughter. Today, she has a chronic infection that could
last a lifetime and progress to cirrhosis and possibly liver cancer. My
firsthand experience with the tragedy of vaccine-preventable diseases makes
me shudder when I hear a parent ask if childhood immunizations are still
necessary.
Victims of success
In the United States, vaccines have become victims of their own successes.
The diseases that killed, paralyzed, or disabled many in our parents' and
grandparents' generations seem remote to a polio-free generation. But
parents who choose NOT to immunize their children are creating a chink in
the health-care armor that protects all of us. Diseases such as whooping
cough still exist at low levels in our country. When immunization rates
drop, this disease and others quickly reappear and jeopardize the health of
infants too young to be immunized and in whom whooping cough can be deadly,
or children and adults with weak immune systems.
Diseases that have disappeared in the United States, such as diphtheria,
still flourish elsewhere around the world. They can re-enter our country
easily as visitors disembark from airplanes or cruise ships. What I find
most frightening, however, is the misinformation spread through the
Internet--and sometimes even echoed by mainstream media--that vaccines
caused autism.
One by one these allegations have been disproved, but I worry about the
children whose parents may have believed those claims and chose not to
vaccinate. There are many reasons we live in the healthiest nation on earth,
but what protects our children best are vaccines. As I look at my child
sitting across the table, I am again reminded of their value and the
terrible price paid when we do not immunize.
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For more information about PKIDS, call (877) 557-5437 or visit the PKIDS
website at http://www.pkids.org
To read other IAC Unprotected People stories in either HTML or
camera-ready (PDF) format, go to:
http://www.immunize.org/stories
DISCLAIMER: The Immunization Action Coalition (IAC) publishes
Unprotected People stories for the purpose of making them available
for our readers' review. We have not verified this story's content,
for which the author is solely responsible.
DO YOU KNOW OF STORIES OF UNPROTECTED PEOPLE? Please let us know if
you have personal stories of people who have suffered or died from
vaccine-preventable diseases or if you know of stories that have
appeared in the media describing suffering that occurred because
someone was not immunized. Send your stories or case reports to
"IAC EXPRESS" by email to admin@immunize.org or by fax to (651)
647-9131.
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