It is said that health is wealth and to guard your wealth you need to take necessary precautions. What better precautions are there to protect your child from sickness, other than immunization. Ensuring that your child is healthy is the responsibility of the parents. Generations ago, due to the unavailability of vaccines, there were not very many options available to prevent your child from contacting viruses, apart from avoiding areas, places and people suspected of being infected, Thankfully, due to modern research, appropriate vaccines are available for most of the diseases.
A child is born with a inherited immune system which is effective from one month to one year but for some diseases such as whooping cough and polio the natural immunization in a child is not effective. Therefore, it is imperative to immune every child against preventive diseases.
After administering the vaccines, a child might experience some side effects. It is up to the physician concerned to study the history of the child prior to administering these vaccines to ensure minimum side effects are experienced. It will not be advisable for a child who has cancer to be vaccinated as that might cause adverse reactions and may have to be postponed for a particular period.
After vaccination it is possible to experience some side effects such as:
- redness, swelling and soreness where the shots were given
- fever
- loss of appetite
- pain in the joints
- fatigue
In extreme situations there could be serious allergic reactions such as hoarseness or wheezing, hives, paleness, dizziness and swelling of the throat. Further allergies may include a child crying in an unusual way in a high pitched voice, or crying for more than 3 hours, or high fever over 104°F, or 40.0°C, collapse as in a shock or convulsions. This will require emergency attention and the child should be rushed to a hospital.
There are side effects relative to the vaccines and in the case of chicken pox vaccine a mild rash which looks like a few chicken pox sores, might develop.Guillain-Barré syndrome is a very rare but is a serious side effect of the Meningococcal Conjugate Vaccine. None of the vaccines contain penicillin-related antibiotics and therefore penicillin related allergies will not be experienced.
There are widespread rumors that autism is a side effect of vaccine. Research has not found any link to this allegation and as a consequence of this baseless accusation, some parents without even checking the veracity of the story, are unwilling to immunize their children. Lack of vaccination has lead to brain damage, death and many other complications,
In most cases the side effects are so insignificant and not long term, and in the contrary the benefits of immunization is incomparable with the side effects experienced.
