VACCINATION has become a dirty word to some people, and they decline having them.
Some decline on religious grounds. Others decline because they believe in conspiracy theories spread on social media and the Internet. According to one such theory, the people who manufacture the vaccines add elements that can cause cancer and other diseases.
In the last decade or so, there were suggestions that immunisation vaccines for children caused autism. That theory had recently been debunked as the research was found to be fake.
As a result of this scare, young parents today have refused the vaccines that were once routinely administered to newborns as part of the immunisation programme. Recently, there has been a rise in the number of cases like diphtheria. Older diseases like polio and tuberculosis that were once contained through vaccinations have now appeared in some countries.
While I cannot personally and totally deny the conspiracy theories, I believe it is better to go with known facts backed by research and numbers, than to go with scare-mongering rumours.
The benefits of vaccines and immunisation far outweigh the risks. For one, diseases can spread rapidly. Viruses and bacteria that cause illness and death still exist and can be passed to those who are not protected by vaccines. It’s particularly scary if the disease is airborne.
When you choose to skip vaccines, you leave yourself vulnerable to diseases such as mumps, measles, chicken pox, diphtheria, rubella, influenza, shingles, and HPV and hepatitis B, the latter two being leading causes of cancer. If you get infected, you risk spreading it to others.
I feel that people who have not experienced challenges can afford to take a highbrow position based on theories and hypothetical situations. However, when you’ve had a personal encounter with the devastation of illness, you will not be hesitant to reach out and opt for anything life-giving with protective benefits!
Take, for example, polio. Up until the first polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s, children and adults died from it. Many of those who were infected and survived, did not fully recover; they ended up with some level of physical disability. My late brother was one of them.
This devastated my parents! Their beautiful baby boy, just barely 2, went limp after a bout of seemingly “ordinary” fever.
How could they have known any better? The symptoms are just like regular influenza — sore throat, headache, neck stiffness and pain in the arms and legs. They did everything they knew and waited for the fever to subside, but the two days it raged on was enough to rob my brother the use of his legs.
His legs went limp. He was unable to walk. It took decades of countless treatments and therapies, as well as several surgeries to get him up and about. Even after all that, he walked with the aid of crutches. Both my parents and my brother were grateful for that. It was better than nothing. Later, as his legs further weakened with the onset of early osteoporosis caused by polio, my brother became wheelchair bound.
Despite his physical disabilities, he went on to lead a full life, graduating with honours from Universiti Malaya, worked with financial institutions and had a beautiful family of two boys. He may have been physically handicapped, but he had a sharp mind, a healthy sense of humour and joie de vivre - the joy of living.
My parents had been his shield, his strength, and his advocate to being the best one could be. This was something I saw as I was growing up, and it was something we all learnt.
As a child, I remember taking sugar cubes with a drop of red anti-polio medicine - once when I was in Standard One and again when I was in Standard Six. We all lined up for this medicine administered in school. We were also given that medicine as newborns. I remember telling my friends that my brother had polio and this medicine would prevent all of us from getting it. How I wish that vaccine was available to my brother when he was born.
Putri Juneita Johari volunteers for the Special Children Society of Ampang. You can reach her at juneitajohari@yahoo.com