The Greatest Health Advance in History
In 1998, just 89 people in the United States contracted the measles, with absolutely no fatalities reported in that year. Compare this with the years between 1958 and 1962, when there were about half a million cases of measles every year in the United States, with over 400 measles related deaths each year. For much of the early 20th century, Americans worried about their children catching potentially life-threatening childhood diseases, with many summers spent worrying about polio epidemics that would infect almost 20 thousand people a year, and would paralyze, cripple and kill men, women, children, affecting even future presidents like Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
But in the year 1962 – and every year since – there were less than 100 cases of polio in the United States, getting down to only 223 cases reported worldwide in 2013. Even more spectacularly, scientists have defeated one of the greatest killers of all, smallpox, a disease that throughout history would devastate whole countries and continents, killing literally millions of people in great epidemics. Now there have been absolutely zero cases of smallpox anywhere since it was eradicated worldwide in 1977.
The secret to these great medical victories is the development of vaccines, perhaps the most significant medical advance in the history of the world. In the 20th century, vaccines saved more lives than any other medical procedure. Besides ridding the world of smallpox and nearly eradicating polio, vaccines have practically eliminated many diseases that would kill or scar thousands of people every year, most frequently the very young or the very old. Add to the growing list of mostly defeated illnesses mumps, chicken pox, Rubella, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), and various kinds of pneumonia that used to kill thousands of senior Americans.
Vaccines protect people in two ways. First, they protect any individual person who has been vaccinated, using the power of each person’s own immune system to put up a protective army of antibodies to defeat the disease before it can get established. Second, when enough people get vaccinated, it doesn’t leave enough vulnerable people for diseases to create an outbreak, where the disease can stay alive by spreading from person to person.
In a very strange way, vaccines have almost been too successful. A generation of people has grown up without having lived through any major epidemics, or having heard the stories of older relatives whose communities experienced the dreadful consequences of disease outbreaks. As a result, some people wrongly assume that the very small degree of risks associated with being vaccinated are more dangerous than the risks of the disease itself. They are choosing not to have their children vaccinated. Unfortunately, in addition to leaving their children at risk, they are helping to create a pool of vulnerable people, giving the diseases just what they need in order to create an outbreak and keep spreading.
In observance of October’s International Infection Prevention Month, make sure that you have a thorough conversation with your doctor and your children’s doctor about what vaccinations are recommended at each stage of life. Vaccinations are the safest – and least expensive – way to prevent a disease from making you or your children just another victim in the long history of the war between people and infectious diseases.
(Contributing Writer:Charles Safford, LCSW, Employee Development & Wellness Services, Georgia State University)