Hylton I. Lightman, MD, DCH (SA), FAAP

Childhood vaccines are a modern medicine success story. Since August is National Immunization Awareness Month, let’s focus on why childhood vaccines are important. The recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics are listed here.

Let’s begin with a brief “stroll” through history.

In March 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced a medical breakthrough that would change lives forever: He had successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio, also known as “infant paralysis” because it affected so many children. One year earlier had been an epidemic year for polio, as 58,000 new cases were reported in the United States alone, and more than 3,000 died from the disease. Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time. With good reason.

I was born not even six months after this announcement, and, as my wise grandmother whom we called “Mum,” pointed out, fewer and fewer people were contracting the polio virus because of the vaccine. Mum was chock full of information about how disease can devastate people, families and communities. She knew first-hand of people who were alive only because of the “iron lung.” We’d walk and talk, with Mum pointing out who was limping because of the polio virus. “Thank G-d, Hylton,” she commented on more than one occasion, “you were born in a time when this disease will become history.”

My peers may have had the shot. Perhaps they share my memory of being given in school a sugar cube on which the oral vaccine of polio was squirted. Today, in this country, we have gone back to the injectable vaccine.

Mum was in my thoughts when immunizing each of our seven children and now our grandchildren. How grateful she would have been that her great-grandchildren have also been spared these diseases and now, her great-great-grandchildren. Her depictions of how diseases ravage made a mark on me, and most likely contributed to my decision to become a pediatrician.

I wonder how Mum would react to hear that today there are people and groups who wish to eradicate vaccines. I’m not sure what they’re trying to achieve. I can’t imagine who’d advocate against vaccines if they ever witnessed a child with the whooping cough, also known with good reason as the “100 Day Cough” and other horrible illnesses. While we still don’t know what causes autism, we do know that vaccines DON’T cause autism.

Make sure your children are immunized. Discuss concerns, if you have any, with your child’s pediatrician. Mum is no longer here to tell you what can happen if you don’t immunize. But I tell you that my medical training and early career years afforded me with ample opportunities to see the ravages of childhood diseases that can now be avoided or mitigated with vaccines.

As always, Daven.