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To asses whether vaccinations are necessary, it is important to understand their purpose. Vaccinations are a tool of prevention against disease. They were developed as a means to prevent epidemics and outbreaks that could sicken, maim, or kill hundreds to thousands of individuals at a time. After decades of struggling with vaccination programs, many of these diseases have been nearly or completely eradicated in the United States (smallpox, polio, pertussis, diphtheria, measles).

So some may ask, "Without anyone being ill, why do we need the prevention?" The answer is that no disease has been eradicated from the entire world, with the exception of smallpox, and children actually still get the diseases that no longer appear to be common. In fact, because of a lack of vaccination, whooping cough (pertussis) and measles are making a comeback, with outbreaks infecting thousands occurring more than once over the past few years. And these are just the so-called childhood diseases, there are a number of other diseases protected against by vaccination when a subpopulation is at risk, such as healthcare workers and Hepatitis B, and the elderly with influenza. Children, travelers, and susceptible adults in the United States still require vaccinations in order to keep the diseases from coming back.

Essentially, vaccinations for common childhood diseases are still necessary in the United States as long as they have a presence in the rest of the world. Diseases such as polio, measles, and diphtheria still ravage the populations in some parts of the world. Measles made a comeback in the United States in 1990 due to the lack of vaccination of children in suburbs (conscious choice by their parents) and inner cities (lack of public health measures and health care). The disease was brought in by international travel.

Even if a disease is rare in the United States, this is a time of global travel and a virus or bacteria can easily travel into the United States.

For all individuals, it is also necessary to vaccinate against disease not present in the United States. These vaccines are required for those planning to travel to locales with endemic disease. Yellow fever, in particular, is a disease that Americans are not exposed to until they travel overseas. If a person were to travel without vaccination and became infected, they would then bring the disease to the United States, a population susceptible to infection. This could result in an epidemic. There are health care measures in place to prevent such a spread, but vaccination is the easiest and most cost-efficient prevention measure, both individually and communally. There are also vaccines necessary for those in certain fields, such as the hepatitis B vaccine for health care workers.

Though vaccinations are still important in the United States, there has been a recent trend to vaccinate against everything. Most people clear infections on their own. There are vaccination schedules developed by the CDC to take into account susceptible populations, so that vaccinations can be properly targeted and used most effectively. The chickenpox vaccine should be restricted to older children who have not yet had the disease. The influenza vaccine should be restricted to immune compromised adults and the elderly, as this is the most efficient use of a limited stock. However, the childhood vaccination schedule immunizes children prior to exposure and they are a highly suscpetible population for disease due to an undeveloped immune system.

Learn more about this author, Alicia M Prater PhD.
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