Immunization Awareness
July 28, 2009 by Peggy Rowland
Filed under Women's Health
Friday will mark the beginning of National Immunization Awareness Month. What would America be like if people didn’t get immunizations?
Here are just a few examples of life without vaccines from the CDC:
- Prior to the polio vaccine, 13,000 to 20,000 cases of paralytic polio were reported each year.
- If we stopped getting the measles vaccine, there would be about 2.7 million measles deaths worldwide.
- Before the vaccine, mumps used to be a major cause of deafness in children (1 in 20,000 reported cases).
It’s important to remember mumps is still lurking in the US. According to the National Institutes of Health, there were 6,584 cases of mumps in the US in 2006. (I had mumps as a teen back in the 1980s. Trust me, you don’t want it.) As for other diseases that may not be around, the CDC cautions that they’re only a plane ride away in some cases.
The CDC has an extensive resource for those wanting more information: Vaccines and Immunizations.
(Image via stock.xchng)
