Vaccines

Unfortunately, many people miss vaccinations. A number of factors can cause people to miss vaccinations for themselves or their children. Reasons for missing vaccinations may vary from year to year, or from one community to another. Poor families may miss vaccinations because they don’t have adequate insurance, while wealthier parents may give into fears about side effects of vaccines. And being busy can happen to anyone.

For instance, a study in 2014 found that major reasons for missing vaccinations in the general population included:

• Low income
• Lack of health insurance
• Low education
• Large families
• Single-parent household.

By contrast, a 2014 survey from the Australia-based parenting website MamaMia asked users about their reasons for missing or delaying vaccinations. The top 3 reasons included:

• A sick child. Doctors may recommend delaying a shot if a child has a fever above 100˚F (38˚C), but many parents might put off a vaccination because a child has a cold, which is not recommended and may put a child at risk.
• Being too busy. This is understandable in a busy day and age, but remember that a missed vaccination endangers your health, your child’s health, and the health of everyone around you—as well as the health of future generations.
• Believing it isn’t important. About 1.5% of the mothers in the survey thought that vaccination didn’t matter as long as other parents vaccinated their kids. Of course, the more common this belief becomes, the less effective vaccination programs will be in the general population. Low vaccination rates have led to disease outbreaks in many places around the world, including New York, Texas, California, Japan, Australia, and Sweden. Even within the MamaMia survey, 3 out of 4 parents had been sick at some point with a disease that could have been prevented by a vaccine.

An especially troubling risk factor for not vaccinating is a growing fear that vaccines may overwhelm a child’s immune system or cause harmful side effects In particular, the myth that vaccines may cause autism arose from one doctor’s interpretation of a small study published over 15 years ago. Most doctors involved in the study disagreed with this interpretation, and multiple studies since have found no link, but the myth persists, largely because of people’s fear of raising a child with autism. According to one study, 93% of pediatricians have encountered at least one patient who refuses to vaccinate a child.

Vaccines may cause some side effects, including fever and, rarely, short-term seizures that can be frightening to watch. However, the overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, both for individuals and for communities.