Children's Immunizations

Vaccinations and Immunizations are incredibly important

Immunizing your child according to the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics can help protect your child from many illnesses. These illnesses can lead to serious and even life threatening complications. Vaccines may have mild side effects or, in rare cases, serious complications. But, it is safer to immunize your children than have them catch a disease that could have been prevented.

Haemophilus influenza type b can cause damage to a child's brain and polio cause a child to become crippled. Except for tetanus, all of the diseases that children are immunized for are contagious. When children are not immunized, serious outbreaks can occur and many children become ill or die because of it.

Infants are born with immunity to certain diseases because antibodies came from the mother. Breastfed babies continue to receive immunities to illnesses through the breast milk. But, these immunities are only temporary.

Vaccinations create an immunity to certain diseases by giving the patient a shot using small amounts of a killed or weakened microorganism that causes the disease.

These microorganisms can be viruses, like measles, or bacteria, like pneumococcus. Vaccines make the immune system react to the minor infection as if there were a real infection. The immune system combats the infection and creates an immunity against future infection.

Parents may hesitate to give their children a vaccine because of concerns about reactions, but because the microorganisms are weakened or killed, it rarely causes serious illness. The usual reactions are soreness where the shot was given or a fever.