Essay: The Benefits and Hazards of Vaccination

Despite the high ability of vaccines to protect people from dangerous diseases, or significantly reducing the morbidity cases of certain diseases, some society are now starting to focus on its risks. The focus on immunizations risks has been fueled by misconceptions existing in the community and a just a few cases that resulted to allergic reactions. This paper is going to discuss the benefits and risks associated with vaccination.
According to WHO, vaccination involves introduction of weakened or dead microorganisms, which bear a resemblance to a disease causing agent. Their similarity causes an immune response that protects the body against future attacks. Some of the benefits of immunization include; saving lives, protecting the public against some highly contagious diseases and also protects the vulnerable groups against diseases. On the other hand, vaccines have been associated with mild risks such as allergy reactions associated with fever, headaches, dizziness and lethargy. In a very few cases, vaccination has been linked to serious health outcomes such as autism and even death.
Immunizations have proved to be one of the most effective strategies used by public health as interventions to curb spread of diseases, prevent deaths and complications from certain infections. The success of vaccinating people can be seen through a reduction in morbidity and mortality of certain diseases in our societies. For instance, through use of DTaP Vaccine since 1985, the number of cases has significantly reduced. Additionally, when there is an outbreak of a specific disease, public health still use vaccination to protect the higher number of populations from infections. Even though the disease that people are vaccinated against may still occur at some point in a life time, vaccinations greatly reduce complications likely to be caused by a certain disease (WHO, 2018) Therefore, more lives are saved, and a society’s resources are saved. For example, money and resources meant to cure the diseases are directed to other economic projects.
Vaccinations help in protecting the vulnerable groups against diseases. For example, it focuses on small children, pregnant and lactating women and the elderly. Due to a compromised / low immunity of these special groups, they can easily get infections from the environment. Hence, it is important for them to obtain vaccinations so as to protect them from getting infections such as Influenza, rotavirus and many more infectious diseases. For example, rotavirus vaccine greatly helps in reduction of G.E in newborns (Madhi et al., 2016). However, some people in these special groups may tend to ignore vaccination due to different misconceptions. For example, some believe that the diseases they are being immunized against no longer exists and hence it is not important to get a vaccine. Unknowingly, the disease-causing agent mays still are available in the environment. Such misconceptions pose a threat to the public health, and also cause recurrence of eradicated diseases (Song, 2014).
During immunizations, the person being vaccinated may get mild negative reactions such as soreness, fever and mild headaches. According to (Khan, 2013), severe reactions such as death and disability occur in a range of 1-10 cases in ten million cases of people who have been immunized. Therefore, not immunizing your child or a vulnerable individual is riskier than dealing with the mild outcomes of vaccination.
In conclusion, vaccinations protect the society against many contagious diseases. Even though the number of cases for immunized diseases has reduced, people should not assume that the disease-causing agents has completely been eradicated. Vaccination still remains an important aspect of public health. Also, myths and misconceptions about vaccinations should also be discouraged so as to encourage more people to participate in getting the acquired immunity. Therefore, immunizations should be supported because its benefits clearly outweigh the risks.