A study by the World Health Organization shows that immunization is the single greatest contribution of any health intervention to ensuring babies not only see their first birthdays but continue leading healthy lives into adulthood. Since their introduction in the late 18th century, vaccines have saved more lives than any other medical intervention throughout history.
In fact, a study published in The Lancet reveals that global immunization programs have saved an estimated 154 million lives — or six lives every minute every year — over the past 50 years. The vast majority of lives saved were in infants, approximately 101 million. As a result, infectious diseases that once devastated generation after generation, such as smallpox and polio, have been eradicated while others have reached historic lows.
Today, there are vaccines available to protect against 30 specific diseases globally (21 in the U.S.). In fact, childhood vaccination alone prevents about four million deaths around the world each year.
Unfortunately, the great public health success of immunization is being threatened by false and misinformation regarding the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. Our federal Department of Health and Human Services is now led by a man who has been one of the leading anti-vaccine voices in America. As a result, we are experiencing one of the largest measles outbreaks in recent years in America. We are witnessing the decline in the number of children receiving necessary immunizations because of parents deciding to opt out of having their children immunized because of the unfounded and false claims of anti-vaccine proponents. We are seeing state legislatures, including here in New Hampshire, sponsoring and passing legislation that weaken immunization requirements and making it more difficult and expensive for children to be immunized.
Most parents with children less than 30 years old did not experience living through the fear of raising children in those dark days when large polio outbreaks killed and paralysed millions of children. They have not seen children who have had severe brain, hearing, cardiac or other complications, or died from measles or other serious diseases. They have not seen children gasping for breath because of whooping cough. They have not seen children with meningitis and life-threatening swelling of their epiglottis from Haemophilus influenzae bacteria. They have not seen so much other suffering and grief caused by vaccine preventable diseases. This is the case because vaccines have become victims of their own success.
The paradox vaccines face is that when they work, as they do in most cases, people stop fearing the diseases they prevent, which leads them to question their value. We all wish for medical miracles to save us from disease. Jon Cohen, author of “Planning Miracles: How to Prevent Future Pandemics,” wrote, “If we can understand that the best measure of the success of things like vaccines is not experiencing the harm they prevent, that might be the biggest miracle of all.” And as Jonas Salk said, when asked what the next great medical breakthrough might be, he responded, “To use the knowledge that we already have.”
Richard DiPentima, of Portsmouth, has served as Chief of Communicable Disease Epidemiology and Assistant Director of Public Health for the NH Division of Public Health Services, Deputy Public Health Director for the Manchester Health Department and is a retired NH Air National Guard public health officer.