Vaccination Should Be Compulsory For Children - Healthcare Essay Sample

From the perspective of health care professionals, vaccinating children plays a critical role in building immunity among kids thus leading immunization to emerge as a form of a social contract. Here, the practice realizes the need for the substantial majority to safeguard the minority of kids whose vaccination does not serve as an option in their case due to medical reasons (Kim, Johnstone, & Loeb, 2011). Nonetheless, the prospects affiliated with making vaccination mandatory have raised hard questions concerning the freedom as well as the autonomy of choice. Individual experts argue that compulsory vaccination serves as the ideal way of safeguarding vulnerable persons from possibly dangerous contagious illnesses. Also, the immunization decisions that parents make have repercussions for their kids as well as other children, including the ones who cannot be immunized due to sound reasons or the ones considered as too young to be offered vaccines (Institute of Medicine, 2004). Thus, vaccines should be mandatory for children because they serve as the best way of keeping the immune system safe, save lives, and avoids spread of preventable diseases.

For most parents, they wish their children the best things in life and want them to remain safe always. In this case, parents need to understand that one of the ideal ways they can safeguard the wellbeing of their children is by making sure they are vaccinated. Vaccinations play an essential role in saving the lives of people and preventing diseases from spreading while at the same time making sure that their immune systems remain safe. For the parents who fail to immunize their children, they end up putting them at risk (Vaccines Today, 2015). The kids might end up catching deadly or dangerous diseases thus an indication that immunization is much better as opposed to acquiring an illness.

Vaccines facilitate in keeping the immune system safe. They have played a vital role in saving the lives of millions of children. In the case of most vaccines issues at childhood, they are between 90 and 99 percent effective when it comes to disease prevention while they have also been perceived as safe. In this case, it is essential to note that the illnesses prevented by vaccines are usually dangerous as well as deadly at times. For vaccines, they minimize the threat of infection through working together with the natural defenses of the body to assist in developing immunity to various illnesses (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006). Whenever germs, including viruses or bacteria, invade one's body, they end up attacking as well as multiplying. The invasion is usually referred to as an infection while the disease contributes to an illness. For the immune system, it plays the role of fighting the illness. Upon fighting the disease, the body remains with additional cells, which assist in recognizing and fighting the diseases when they re-emerge. For vaccines, they contribute to the development of immunity through imitating a particular infection although the imitation does not lead to any disease. However, it usually leads the immune system to establish a specific response similarly as it is the case with real infection to ensure that the body is capable of recognizing and fighting diseases that can be prevented by vaccines in the future (Kim, Johnstone, & Loeb, 2011). At other times, after attaining a vaccine, the imitation infection might portray certain symptoms, including fever, which is normal while the body is building immunity. While children advance in age, they need extra vaccine doses to perfect protection (Institute of Medicine, 2004). In the case of older children, they should be safeguarded against other illnesses that might emerge.

Vaccinations also play an essential role when it comes to saving lives. For instance, due to the prevalence of vaccines, illnesses such as smallpox have disappeared while polio has almost been eradicated thus leading vaccines to be perceived as a contemporary miracle. Vaccination serves as one of the major breakthroughs in modern medicine while no other form of medical intervention has played such a critical role when it comes to saving lives. Whereas illnesses, such as smallpox, polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, and meningitis C are currently rare, it has become easy to underestimate the need for vaccinating children (Institute of Medicine, 2004). However, it is essential to note that illnesses including whooping cough and diphtheria continue to pose significant threats. While the diseases seem rare at present, they might return at an uncontrollable rate in case children are not vaccinated (Vaccines Today, 2015).

For instance, after the 1970s and 1980s scare of the whooping cough vaccine, a significant number of parents started hindering their children from taking vaccines against the illness. As a result, three major epidemics emerged to the extent that more than 100 children lost their lives after they contracted the disease. In this sense, vaccinations play an essential role in saving lives while they are anticipated continue doing so in the coming years. Research is growing considerably while over 150 vaccines are under testing presently. Soon, it will be possible to come up with an advanced pneumococcal vaccine, which will facilitate in offering safeguard against the disease's strains while investigations are being carried out on long-lasting vaccines to combat flu (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006).

In preventing the spread of diseases, it is becoming increasingly essential to vaccinate children. Across the U.S., for instance, vaccines have eradicated or reduced a considerable number of infectious illnesses that once led to the death of many adults, children, and infants. Nonetheless, the bacteria and viruses that lead to vaccine-preventable disease and death are still prevalent while they are also possible to spread to individuals lacking vaccine protection (Kim, Johnstone, & Loeb, 2011). Vaccine-preventable illnesses are affiliated with different economic and social costs, such as when sick children end up missing school while parents lose their time at work to care for their children. The illnesses also lead to hospitalizations, doctor's visits, as well as premature deaths. Certain diseases, including diphtheria and polio, are rare within the U.S. The reason as to why they are becoming increasingly scarce is the existence of vaccines. In this vein, unless a disease can be eradicated entirely, it is essential to keep offering vaccines (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006).

Even if only limited cases are apparent presently, eliminating the protection availed by vaccines will lead an increasing number of people to contract the illnesses in line with spreading them to others. The role of vaccinations does not only entail safeguarding children. It also aims at vaccinating grandchildren as well as their grandchildren. For instance, with the eradication of smallpox, the present-day children no longer need getting shots of the illness since it does not exist anymore. In continuing vaccination efforts today, parents with in the future be able to develop trust, that diseases, such as meningitis and polio will not affect, cripple, or even kill children (Vaccines Today, 2015). Therefore, in supporting mandatory vaccines to children, it is apparent that they would contribute to increased health benefits for children, families, loved ones, societies, and entire nations through making the immune system safe, saving lives, and avoiding the spread of preventable diseases.

References

Institute of Medicine. (2004). Immunization safety review: Vaccines and autism. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Kim, T. H., Johnstone, J., & Loeb, M. (2011). Vaccine herd effect. Scandinavian Journal of, 43(9), 683-689.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2006). Five important reasons to vaccinate your child. Retrieved from https://www.vaccines.gov/more_info/features/five-important-reasons-to-vaccinate-your-

Vaccines Today. (2015). What is herd immunity? Retrieved from https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/what-is-herd-immunity/