Vaccination during childhood has been one of the best public health strategies to curb and eliminate diseases in the country and it will continue to be so. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) play a huge and vital role in preventing child morbidity and child mortality by issuing periodical recommendations to update vaccination trends.

Why are vaccinations effective?
There are two reasons why vaccinations are effective. First and foremost, the rate of a disease and its associated asymptomatic carrier state decreases once a person is immunized from a particular pathogen. Second, when a substantially huge chunk of the population is vaccinated, the remainder of the population (those that are unvaccinated) are protected due to the decreased level of exposure. This is known as “herd immunity”. There is now a direct correlation between vaccinations and improved quality and prolonging of life in children.

Benefits of vaccination
From the early 2000s onward, new vaccines for meningococcal disease, human papillomavirus (HPV), and rotavirus (RV) have become a part of healthcare. In fact, the RV vaccine has single-handedly reduced the number of hospital admissions due to diarrhea and has saved over $200 million during the years 2008 and 2009. The HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the country. Vaccinations against the HPV received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2006. According to a study by PubMed Central, within three years of approval, there was a 56% reduction in the number of patients suffering from HPV.

Since its inception, vaccination has had its share of controversies with certain groups calling them unnatural and contaminating. Even so, it cannot be denied that vaccination has become the most effective way of disease control over time.

The disease control benefits of vaccination can be divided into three parts:

• Eradication
• Elimination
• Control of mortality, morbidity, and complications

Vaccination, although effective most of the time, is not foolproof. Diseases may infect previously vaccinated individuals as well. The two ways in which this can happen are:

• Primary– Where the vaccine fails and the exposure and risk of being infected by the disease remain the same.
• Secondary– Wherein the vaccine is functional, but it does not perform to its highest potential. Thus, if the specific disease affects the body, the effect will be milder than compared to the effect it would have on an unvaccinated person.

An unsung benefit of vaccination is that it results in protection from related diseases (diseases other than the targeted diseases). The influenza vaccine has been found to protect children from acute otitis media with vaccine effectiveness of more than 30% in the country, in Finland, and some other countries. Measles vaccination has made a significant contribution to curbing dysentery, malnutrition, keratomalacia, and bacterial pneumonia.

It has also been seen that vaccination can increase the life expectancy of an individual. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), older people who were administered the influenza vaccine in the country have had a 50% lower risk of mortality from all causes compared to their unvaccinated counterparts, as well as a 20% lesser chance of suffering cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases.