U.S. National Infant Immunization Week Targeted Children Who Lack Vaccinations.(Brief Article)

2001 MAY 23 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

More than 900,000 American children are not routinely immunized, the consequence of which may be a revival of nearly eradicated diseases, say University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas physicians.

Allaying the fears of parents about vaccine side effects and motivating and educating others to have their children routinely immunized was the purpose of National Infant Immunization Week, which ended April 28, 2001.

Widespread childhood immunization in the past decades has freed parents from fear. Polio, whose frequent outbreaks caused panic only 50 years ago, is now a distant memory in the United States, and smallpox has been wiped out around the world.

"We now have a generation of young parents who aren't familiar with these diseases," said Dr. Jane Siegel, professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern. "They've never had to worry about polio. We have to learn from history."

Siegel, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases, notes that several diseases remain far from wiped out. Pertussis (whooping cough) outbreaks are frequent. Thousands of children who had not been immunized contracted measles in 1989-1991 outbreaks in U.S. urban areas, and an ongoing risk of exposure to measles remains in other countries and from foreign individuals entering the United States. In fact, a 1999 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that children who weren't immunized against measles were 35 times more likely to contract the disease than those who had received the vaccine.

Still, many parents remain wary of vaccines. Most recently, concerns have surfaced about Prevnar, which protects against such pneumococcal diseases as meningitis, pneumonia, and bloodstream infection. Fear of immunizations was heightened in 1999 when the vaccine for rotavirus, a form of intestinal flu that affects young infants, was pulled from use because of increased risk (one in 5,000) of bowel obstruction following vaccination.