Immunizations

At work we just finished up a massive immunization campaign to get all 33,000 employees immunized. It was a major undertaking and I've spent the past 4 months working on it. In our Employee Health Meeting last week we were talking about this and one of the nurses read the following. (BTW, this pic is funny, the mom seems to be getting some sadistic pleasure from seeing her kid in pain. But I guess I can't judge, every time I see a kid fall down or run into something, I burst out laughing)



“Few of us today give much thought to the gasping breath of the whooping cough, let alone the iron lungs and braces of children attacked by polio, or the devastating birth defects caused by the "German measles" virus. For most Americans, these once-feared and common scourges are relics of an ancient history. Yet only a little more than 100 years ago, the infant mortality rate in the United States was an astounding 20%. In other words, for every 5 babies born, 1 would die before his first birthday, and almost always the cause was infectious in origin. But as any doctor will tell you, the primary reason that childhood killers ranging from diphtheria to measles have been tamed in recent years is the widespread, safe, effective, and affordable vaccination of American children.” [Taking Shots: The Modern Miracle of Vaccines. Markel, Howard, MD, PhD. Medscape Pediatrics. 2004; 6(1).]