Although already introduced since the early 20th century, today vaccination coverage in many places not yet reached 100 percent. In fact, the number of children who received the vaccine decreased. In Indonesia the immunization coverage of only about 60 percent.
In fact, vaccination has proven to be a cheap and effective way to prevent morbidity and mortality in children due to infectious diseases.
Here are five myths about the vaccine and misleading facts behind the myth.
1. Vaccines are not important Until now the disease is successfully ELIMINATED (loss) before smallpox pockmarks (small pox). Other diseases, although the vaccine was discovered decades ago, still exist. For example, polio, chicken pox or whooping cough.
2. The children receive too many vaccines too early and The vaccine is most effective ways to prevent infectious diseases faced by the children of the neighborhood every day.
"The body of the child continues to face many things that make their immune systems work hard, ranging from bacteria in our own bodies are also bacteria that comes from food, drink and the air," said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Experts immunology from the University of California, USA, examined the amount of vaccine that can be responded by a person's body at a time. After considering various types of components in the vaccine, including bacterial proteins, they found that infants and children can safely respond to 100,000 vaccines at one time. Whereas the average a child get 14 kinds of vaccine within two years.
3. MMR vaccine caused autism This myth began developing in 1998 when Dr.Andrew Wakefield and his team published the findings in the journal The Lancet. They observe the health of 12 children, who 8 of them having a developmental disorder which, according to the children's parents was caused by the MMR vaccine. The study has caused panic around the world and cause the number of children immunized has fallen dramatically.
And earlier this year the editors of The Lancet officially declare that the research interesting for spreading false information. After lengthy research, experts, including physicians in the WHO said the MMR vaccine is not associated with increased cases of autism in the world.
Various studies have been conducted and found no link between MMR vaccine with autism. One of the largest and long-term study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2002. The study looked at 537,000 health of children and found rates of autism between children who got the vaccine and not turned out the same.
4. Vaccines are not 100 percent safe This myth may have a point. However, walking was not guarantee we are not 100 percent safe? We could have been dropped or tersenggol motor. In fact it does not make people so afraid to walk on the roadside.
Most vaccines are given via injection can cause pain, redness and swelling on the skin at the injection. Other side effects were fever and allergic reactions. Even so, the nature of the side effects that individual. Moreover, the risk is greater if the child is not immunized. Vaccine technology became more sophisticated so that the reaction to the vaccine are much less frequent and lighter.
5. Vaccines prevent disease is not effective Most vaccines currently in circulation are already in the next 50 years, so most parents do not recognize the kinds of diseases can be prevented by immunization.
For example, before a vaccine is available in 1963, nearly all U.S. children had chicken pox before the age of 15. In that country, this disease each year kills 450 people, mostly children. But after the vaccine was introduced, cases of chickenpox dropped to only 37 in 2004.
Unfortunately, since 2006, the number of children who had chicken pox increased to 130. According to CDC data, most children are not vaccinated at the request of the patient's own parents.
The same trend also occurred in Britain where the number of people with chicken pox increased from 56 cases in 1998 to 1324 cases in 2008. The reason is because parents did not want her child vaccines.
