Childhood Vaccines: Myths and Facts
Do vaccines lead to autism or is it all right to skip some specific vaccines. These are of the questions that may be haunting minds of most of the first time parents when they go for vaccination of their babies.
In fact childhood vaccines act as protecting covers for your children resisting several serious diseases. But you may be wondering about the advantages of childhood vaccines and take into consideration the risk factors involved with them.
Are vaccines necessary?
Some people believe that vaccines are not required in children. In fact childhood vaccines protect children from diphtheria, measles, polio and several other serious and potentially life threatening conditions like whooping cough and tetanus. Only those who did not hear about all such fatal diseases may wonder if vaccines are required or not.
With the drop in immunization rates the vaccine-preventable diseases may emerge again posing threat to health.
Do vaccines have dangerous side effects?
Almost all vaccines have some minor side effects on the body. Many vaccines may cause minor fever and soreness besides turning the site of injection reddish and swollen.
After administration of some of the vaccines the children may have temporary headache or dizziness. Such vaccines may also cause fatigue or make children lose their appetite. Severe allergic reaction rarely occurs as a result of administration of such vaccines. The chances of seizure and other neurological side effects too are rare in such vaccines.
Though such rare side effects become cause for worry yet these vaccines can be the safest options considering their ability to prevent life threatening diseases.
Of course some children having allergic response to certain vaccine components are not administered vaccines. Similarly a child developing life threatening response to a specific vaccine is not administered further dose of that vaccine.
Do vaccines cause autism?
Whether or not autism occurs as a result of vaccination still remains a debatable issue. However, researchers have observed possible link between childhood vaccines with autism. Though symptoms of autism may become apparent in children at the time of administration of vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella yet they may be considered only as coincidence.
