Childhood Vaccinations Are they really needed Essay

Childhood Vaccinations Are they really needed - Essay Example Flanders (2000), states the two examples of child's deaths which are connected with vaccination and non-vaccination. According to her article, one of the girls died of Hepatitis B, which kills about 5,000 thousand people in the US each year and the other died after being vaccinated against polio. The main question, asked by Flanders (2000), is whether it should be obligatory to go through childhood vaccination, or should parents be able to refuse from immunization 'to avoid rare, but sometimes, serious, reactions' 'All sides of this debate have the same concerns at heart. They all want children to be healthy and protected. It's just the ways to achieve this goal that are contentious. The fact that vaccines prevent a huge number of illnesses, but have some side effects, makes for a difficult policy question, but not one that hasn't been solved in other areas.' (Allen 2002) At the same time, according to the Allen's article, 'the compensation program provides financial assistance to families to care for children injured by vaccines and helps those families who have lost a child to a severe side effect'. But it should be remembered, that the mentioned system is designed as 'non-fault', which means that it is no need in defining whether vaccine has been defective or the doctor didn't have enough medical skills to prevent side effects. In case no other specific medical reasons for child's death are found, it is supposed that the vaccine has caused it. But it should also be remembered, that ' if the injury or cause of death is not one of a list of known vaccine side effects, the families must provide proof that the ailment was caused by the vaccine'. (O'Meara, 2003) Using the MEDLINE database, it was possible to find the following data: 'There's been a huge decline, and disease rates in adults are now higher than in children," said Dr. Beth P. Bell, chief of epidemiology in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Division of Viral Hepatitis and senior author of a report that appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association. There were 25,000 to 35,000 cases of hepatitis A per year in this country before the era of vaccination. But in 2003, about 7,600 cases were reported, and the total for 2004 will probably be around 6,000.' (http:/nurseworldmag.com/articles-on-nursing/healthcare.htm) Research methodology The present research is based on comparing the existing literary sources and data in terms of positive and negative effects of childhood vaccination, for finding out the objective and profound conclusion. Theoretical framework The theoretical framework of the present research should be based on the analysis of the available data in relation to positive and negative effects of the vaccinations. At the same time, the main hypothesis of the work is that health care for both groups of children (those who have received their vaccinations according to the schedule and those who didn't) will not be different. The independent variable here is presented by the presence or absence of vaccination among children, while any differences in health medical care for them