Parent's rights to refuse immunizations for their children



Parent's rights to refuse immunizations for their children

Abstract

Vaccines are the highly effective agents that confer immunity to certain diseases. In today's world vaccination during childhood has become an important aspect of an individual's life. In our study we have discussed the pros and cons of vaccination, and how government has imposed laws over the parents to get their children immunized for a particular disease. The government employs a punitive approach that is making the parents more defensive. The best way to cope up with this problem is to give clear transmission of information to parents that the decision to vaccinate a child is not only for the benefit of the child, but also for the benefit of other children with whom the child may come into contact.

Table of content

Abstractii

Introduction1

Discussion1

The History of Vaccinology2

Edward Jenner and the Birth of Vaccinology3

Pros and cons of Vaccinations4

Importance of immunization4

Adverse Effects and Opposition to Vaccination5

Parents rights to refuse immunization7

Conclusion8

Parent's rights to refuse immunizations for their children

Introduction

Vaccination and the discovery of antibiotics can be credited as the main factors that increased global life expectancy during the past century. Vaccines, one of the most effective and efficient measures to advance individual and public health, represent at the same time one of the most rewarding health interventions in history, with benefits that extend far beyond infection control. For example, since 1994, the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF), together with several nongovernmental organizations, successfully negotiated cease-fires in several locations worldwide, including Afghanistan, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to allow vaccination campaigns to proceed. The children in United States today get vaccines routinely that protect them from various diseases such as tetanus, measles and polio. These diseases now have turned into history being at a very lower level. The years of immunization have helped these diseases to vanish from the society. There are many reasons for parents to refuse an advice of a doctor to have their kid vaccinated for considerable diseases which can be experienced in childhood or later.

Discussion

Even though vaccination saves 3 million children's lives annually, Jenifer Ehreth (2003) estimated that almost another 3 million lives are lost worldwide as a result of diseases that are preventable by vaccination. During recent years, tremendous efforts have focused on developing new vaccines, generating safer vaccines to replace the existing ones, and making vaccination affordable for an increasing number of children worldwide. Ehreth highlights the importance of envisioning vaccination not just as an individual prophylactic intervention, but also as a “collective activity.” Vaccination of one person may protect multiple community members, high vaccination rates in one country can benefit neighboring countries, and high vaccination rates in one generation may benefit future generations. If most of the population is vaccinated against a pathogen, not enough susceptible individuals exist to maintain the pathogen, and the chances that an epidemic will occur is much lower. This “herd protection” allows some infectious diseases to be eliminated from the population even without achieving 100 percent immunization coverage ...