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| Oct 14, 2015
Where do you stand on the immunisation debate? Would you send your child to childcare where they may contract a life threatening disease because another child hasn’t been vaccinated?
The federal government has introduced its ‘no jab, no pay’ budget measures with parents who don’t immunise their children missing out on childcare benefits.
Dr Dean Robertson an emergency doctor in northern NSW says, “In Australia, vaccination has long been an ‘individual choice’. Individual choice works for haircuts and handbags, but not for preventing infectious diseases that kill kids.”
Associate Professor Cameron Grant from the University of Auckland says, “Babies in their first year of life are particularly vulnerable to complications from serious diseases that can be stopped with a simple vaccine.
Dr. Sujal Ghosh, Pediatrician from University Hospital Düsseldorf, Germany (currently doing a research fellowship at University College London) says, “Immunising children is essential for their wellbeing and protects children from severe viral and bacterial diseases. It’s also a parent’s responsibility towards their child and society.
“Campaigners against immunisation present misleading data and many so called ‘experts’ preach not to vaccinate children. They focus on associations especially between different types of vaccinations and diseases like multiple sclerosis, sudden infant death syndrome, cancer, allergy and other immunological or neurological diseases, and also autism.
“Also, the objectors highlight direct complications as a result of vaccinations, like allergic reactions. However, their presented data don’t show any or only loose scientific evidence (e.g. ‘we have more diabetes, since the introduction of vaccine A’) and doesn’t take into account the lifestyle and diet change that may have caused the disease in the first place.
“Adding to this, no study of the anti-vaccine campaigners/ objectors compares to deaths due to possible side effects (which are virtually minimal) with the deaths of children, which would occur if the paediatric population in western countries would not be mass-immunised.
“Another typical argument by the anti-vaccine campaigners are that there are more deaths from ‘effect A’ e.g. the measles vaccine than death from measles.
It´s true in a perfect vaccinated society and that is why some governments pay compensation for the so called vaccine related mortality / morbidity.
“We’ve noticed also a ‘social class component’ to this issue—especially in western countries—where children from ‘educated classes’ are unlikely to be vaccinated against measles. To have an effective protection in the society we need a vaccination rate of 95 per cent.
“In 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2014 there were several measles outbreaks in Germany—especially in private schools. These children came from families whose parents were in the high income bracket and different vaccine philosophy. The vaccination rate within this group is 25 per cent.
“Poor-resource countries like Cuba—with a very efficient vaccine and public health policy—managed to be measles free. The global aim is to eliminate the virus completely like smallpox.
“Personally,” Dr Ghosh says, “I haven’t seen a single case of a severe vaccine-associated complication. However, I have seen multiple cases of severe measles, chicken pox, and whooping cough (in two cases of the latter leading to severe brain damage due to low oxygen supply). In all these instances the parents actively decided not to vaccinate their child.
“Not all the vaccination schemes harmonise with each other, and countries have their own national preference due to scientific evidence. However, there is a good consensus of a basic vaccination schedule leading to excellent prevention of severe infectious disease in the majority of children.”
It can be quite stressful to adopt an ‘each to their own’ policy especially if your vaccinated child catches a life threatening disease because 20 kids in the childcare centre are unvaccinated.
There are lots of useful information in the Australian Immunisation Handbook and on Herd Immunity that can help you decide.