Parents should immunize their children against diseases

By Jill Wellock | The Olympian's Board of Contributors • Published March 11, 2009

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Our son contracted mononucleosis, which hit with pneumonia this week amid a 104-degree fever, convulsions, headache, and delirium. After a five-hour emergency room visit, we felt relieved that he doesn't have meningitis.

The ensuing fatigue will tax his body as his immune system fights the virus, canceling basketball season, tae kwon do and much of the rest of seventh grade.

Sadly, no immunization prevents mononucleosis, but I would have vaccinated him if I could have. No parent would ever volunteer a child for virulent illness, but many risk infection, despite protective, good intentions. Washington's dismal immunization rate is evidenced by infections and outbreaks that could have been prevented.

Case in point: the Washington state high school wrestling tournament, which was Feb. 20-21 in the Tacoma Dome. One thousand wrestlers and 30,000 spectators were exposed to more than a few good half nelson holds. They were exposed to pertussis.

The News Tribune reported March 5 that at least 15 people — including wrestlers, coaches, and spectators — with pertussis, or whooping cough, attended the tournament, "raising health officials' concerns about a widespread outbreak of the disease."

According to the Centers for Disease Control, pertussis results "in prolonged coughing spells that can last for many weeks. These spells can make it difficult for a child to eat, drink, and breathe. In infants it can also cause pneumonia and lead to brain damage, seizures, and mental retardation."

The same inoculation (DTP) includes protection against diphtheria and tetanus, two infections with which we modern-day Americans have little or no first-hand experience. The CDC cites that in 1921 alone, a total of 206,000 cases of diphtheria and 15,520 deaths were reported.

Likewise, the CDC states that tetanus — or lockjaw — kills 300,000 newborns and 30,000 birth mothers worldwide who are not properly vaccinated, with a 20 percent death rate of reported cases.

Because our society has not seen the devastating effects of these infections and others like polio, measles, mumps and hepatitis B, it's easier to forgo the vaccination and thereby risk the disease. My neighbor's son never suffered paralysis for life from polio, but my grandmother's did.

Parents in Third World countries sacrifice and travel great distances to inoculation clinics, because, if given the choice, they will not risk the disease. They've seen the disease firsthand.

With the lack of immunization in Washington and the United States at large, we decrease our society's collective resistance to diseases that physicians once dreamed of eradicating from the world. As fewer citizens inoculate, isolated outbreaks of measles or mumps will herald widespread epidemics. Aging people, those with compromised immune systems and perhaps all adults will require booster vaccines to avoid contracting diseases they wouldn't have to fear if outbreaks and epidemics had been averted.

Parents who decline vaccinations do so with the best intentions of love and protection, but until science proves a clear and overt risk in receiving vaccines, perceived threats do not warrant risking these diseases.

My husband explained it to me with force during medical residency when he cared for a baby whose parents had declined the inoculation that could have prevented the meningitis that led to the baby's deafness, blindness and mental retardation.

He cried.

Jill Wellock, a local freelance writer, serves on The Olympian's Board of Contributors and can be reached at mjwellock@aol.com.