Vaccines are one of the safest medicinal products, but there are still many myths and misunderstandings about them, says Dr. Anna Nitka and Dr. Paweł Grzesiowski.
Dr. Nitka from the Vaccination Consulting Clinic of the Warsaw Children’s Hospital emphasizes that the preventive vaccinations included in the vaccination schedule are mandatory, but not compulsory. However, she urges us not to give up on them, because the risk of an infectious disease is greater than the possible threats it poses.
Dr. Grzesiowski from the Institute of Infection Prevention emphasizes that the positive effect of vaccinations, visible in epidemiological studies, is invisible to the general public, but the complications and adverse effects of protective vaccinations are publicized by everyone.
Both specialists explain the most common misconceptions about immunization.
Myth 1: It is better to naturally have an infectious disease than to obtain artificial immunity, because disease is important for the proper development of a child.
– You have to be very lucky, because an infectious disease can result in serious complications and even death. In addition, overload may not provide immunity. It is not possible due to serious infections caused, for example, by pneumococci and meningococci.
Myth 2: The price of the vaccination is too high, it exposes you to pain and multiple injections.
– Vaccination is less suffering than disease. The price of a natural contracting of an infectious disease may be paralysis (as a result of infection with a virus, polio), retardation of psychomotor development (H. influenzae bacteria), cirrhosis of the liver (hepatitis B infection) and pneumonia (as a result of pneumococcal infection).
Myth 3: Vaccines don’t work because diseases go away on their own and most cases occur among people who are vaccinated.
– For how wrong this belief is, it is enough to compare how often infectious diseases occur in developed countries, where vaccination is widely used, and in developing countries, where vaccination is absent.
Myth 4: Vaccines are harmful, and vaccinated people also get sick and even die.
– Some people may experience side effects after they have been vaccinated, but most often these are just so-called side effects. vaccine reactions. There is no evidence that vaccinations can cause autism, autoimmune disease, diabetes or so-called sudden cot death.
Myth 5: Immunization overloads the immune system by introducing too many antigens (substances that trigger an immune response) into the body.
– We encounter many more antigens in nature, in everyday life.
Myth 6: Vaccines are given too early.
– Infectious diseases are especially dangerous for the youngest children, without immunity. Two-month-old babies are particularly vulnerable to infection, as they lose the immunity they received from their mother. Immunity gives them vaccination.
Myth 7: Infectious diseases are mild.
– Even healthy children can die of them. It must be remembered that a disease that causes relatively few complications, but often occurs, in absolute numbers, can cause many complications. An example is chickenpox: over 180 thousand. people who became infected in 2010, over 1 thousand patients were hospitalized due to complications.
Myth 8: Vaccines are ineffective.
– Studies have proven that vaccines are highly effective. Occasionally, the person who has been vaccinated may become ill. But this is what happens when it is attacked by a type of germ against which it is not protected by the administered preparation. The course of the disease is usually milder then.
Myth 9: Vaccines are risky.
– Vaccines are not without any risk. There are no vaccines 100%. safe and 100 percent effective. But the risk of not getting vaccinated is many times higher, because you can fall ill with a dangerous infectious disease.
Myth 10: There are many contraindications for immunization.
– Contraindication to vaccinations is not allergy, asthma, prematurity and low birth weight, breastfeeding, physiological jaundice (occurring in newborns – PAP), antibiotics, low doses of steroids, dermatitis, chronic heart, lung, kidney and liver diseases.
Zbigniew Wojtasiński (PAP)