The World can be changed in just a quick minute. There are so many different situations that can cause our World to change, for example, health concerns, severe weather, or even just the way we act as a nation. So many things can change our society in one quick instant. One huge change that has happened in our world is immunizations. This has made a lot of changes from our past, to the current vaccines and to what our future holds in that aspect as well. Our history of immunizations/vaccines has shown that it has come such a long way.
Our past for vaccines and immunizations is really interesting. According to the article, A brief history of vaccination, “Edward Jenner is considered the founder of vaccinology in the West in 1796, after he inoculated a 13 year-old-boy with vaccinia virus (cowpox), and demonstrated immunity to smallpox.” According to that same article, “In 1798, the first smallpox vaccine was developed.” This was a major turning point for our history. This one vaccine was the start of something huge, and they did not even realize it at first. Vaccinations are really important when it comes to preventing outbreaks of diseases and trying to keep people healthy. The article, A brief history of vaccination states “Louis Pasteur’s experiments spearheaded the development of live attenuated cholera vaccine and inactivated anthrax vaccine in humans (1897 and 1904, respectively). Plague vaccine was also invented in the late 19th Century.” As soon as Edward Jenner figured out that he has mysteriously vaccinated that child against smallpox, this really opened up our world to endless possibilities when it came to protecting from harmful diseases. There were many diseases that started to take over the population, like Polio, Smallpox, Tuberculosis, Measles, Mumps and Rubella. In today’s world, we have a lot of vaccinations because of these terrible diseases that tried to take over our population.
In today’s health world, we have a lot of vaccinations that help protect us from major health problems. According to the timeline on www.historyofvaccines.org, in 2000 there was a “99% reduction in Polio Cases”, in 2000 “Endemic Measles eliminated from U.S.”, in 2002 “Polio eliminated in Europe”, in 2014 “group b meningococcal vaccine approved” and in 2016 “Measles certified eliminated from Americas”. This just goes to show how throughout the years a lot of things got eliminated and most of that was because of vaccinations. I have a daughter who is 14 months old. Since even before she was born, we have been giving her immunizations to protect her from everything. I had to get a Tdap (Tetanus) shot while I was pregnant, and so did my husband. This was to protect our daughter from the whooping cough.
Since my daughter has been born, she has gotten several series of shots including for chickenpox, Hepatitis B, Tdap, Pneumococcal, MMR, and Rotavirus. These are everything that she has received since the day she was born. It is crazy how many vaccines that we give our children, but they are to protect, which is better than them getting the disease down the road. According to the article, Vaccines: Past, Present, and Future, “The Department of the Army oversees efforts to develop vaccines needed to protect military personnel (and others at risk) from a range of pathogens not generally encountered by the U.S. civilian population.” This was a really interesting fact because not a lot of people think that the Army has anything to do with immunizations. There are so many steps that go hand in hand in getting a vaccine authorized to be used on the human population. I believe that we are headed for great things in our future.
Our future has a lot of potential for some amazing things in the health care system. One of the major problems that we are having in the past month, is how a lot of people are refusing to get their kids vaccinated for certain things. My family has a history of problems with the flu shot, so I do refuse that shot for my daughter and myself. My sister got Guillain-Barre from getting a flu shot. She was on disability from work (she is a nurse) for 9 months while she tried to overcome this disease. Thankfully she is 90% back to normal, but she still has some issues here and there. Another vaccine that a lot of people are refusing is the MMR. There was just a problem with a lot of kids being diagnosed with Measles just this year. According to the article Measles Cases and Outbreaks, “From January 1 to February 7, 2019, 101 individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 10 states.” A lot of doctors believe this is because the parents are refusing to get their children vaccinated, and it is causing these diseases to make a comeback.
The problems that we may face in the future could be huge if parents keep refusing to get their children vaccinated. Vaccinations are made to protect from huge diseases and prevent an epidemic from happening. If there are thousands of children not vaccinated, then we can have a huge group of those children get affected by something like the measles, or maybe worse. A lot of people refuse their immunizations for a reason, which every parent has a right to do, but it could cause for a big problem in the next 10+ years.
There are a lot of epidemics that have happened throughout our history. Many of them have helped us get to the point that we are at today with immunizations. We have a huge past, a great present and possibly scary future when it comes to vaccinations and diseases. Hopefully a lot of people will realize that most of the immunizations that babies and children get are going to help keep our population growing, and not bring us a deadly disease that could wipe out our nation.
Works Cited
- (2017, April). A brief history of vaccination. Retrieved on February 16, 2019 from http://www.immune.org.nz/vaccines/vaccine-development/brief-history-vaccination.
- Measles Cases and Outbreaks: Measles Cases in 2019. Retrieved on February 16, 2019 from https://www.cdc.gov/measles/cases-outbreaks.html.
- The History of Vaccines: An Educational Resource By The College Of Physicians Of Philadelphia. Retrieved on February 16, 2019 from https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline/all.
- Vaccines: Past, Present, and Future. Retrieved on February 16, 2019 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216821/.
