JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas –
It is always better to prevent a disease than to treat it after it occurs.
Diseases that used to be common in this country and around the world, including polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), rubella (German measles), mumps, tetanus, rotavirus and Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) can now be prevented by vaccination.
Thanks to a vaccine, one of the most terrible diseases in history – smallpox – no longer exists outside the laboratory. Over the years, vaccine have prevented countless cases of disease and saved millions of lives.
Immunity is the body’s way of preventing disease. Children are born with an immune system composed of cells, glands, organs, and fluids located throughout the body.
The immune system recognizes germs that enter the body as “foreign invaders” and produces proteins called antibodies to fight them. Newborn babies are immune to many diseases because they have antibodies they got from their mothers. However, this immunity goes away during the first year of life.
The first time a child is infected with a specific antigen like the measles virus, the immune system produces antibodies designed to fight it.
This takes time, since the immune system usually can’t work fast enough to prevent that antigen from causing disease, so that the child still gets sick. However, the immune system “remembers” that antigen. If it ever enters the body again, even after many years, the immune system can produce antibodies fast enough to keep it from causing disease a second time. This protection is called immunity.
Vaccines contain the same antigens that cause diseases. For example, mumps vaccines contains mumps virus. But the antigens in vaccines are either killed, or weakened to the point that they don’t cause disease. However, they are strong enough to make the immune system produce antibodies that lead to immunity. In other words, a vaccine is safer substitute for a child’s first exposure to a disease. The child gets protection without suffering from the actual diseases that vaccines prevent.
If an unvaccinated child is exposed to a disease germ, the child’s body may not be strong enough to fight the disease. Before vaccines, many children died from diseases that vaccines now prevent, such as whooping cough, measles, mumps and polio. Those germs exist today, but because babies are protected by vaccines, we don’t see these diseases nearly as often.
Immunizing individual children also helps to protect the health of our community, especially those people who cannot be immunized, such as children who are too young to be vaccinated, vote who can’t receive certain vaccines for medical reasons and the small proportion of people who don’t respond to a particular vaccine.
Vaccine-preventable diseases have a costly impact, resulting in doctor’s visits, hospitalizations, and premature deaths. Sick children can also cause parents to lose time from work.
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, diseases such as influenza and mumps have been reported in the United States. Since April 8, the CDC has reported 2,305 cases of mumps in the U.S.
To help stop the spread of vaccine-preventable disease such as influenza and the mumps, people should continue to get vaccinations on time, cover a cough or sneeze, wash hands frequently with soap and water and don’t share food or drinks.
If you don’t know your vaccination status, talk with your health care provider about getting vaccinations.
Brooke Army Medical Center Public Health Nursing will continue to collaborate with local health department to monitor the health of the community for communicable diseases.