Vaccination Today Is More Than Just A Few Shots

Did you know that today’s vaccination schedule is triple what it was a generation ago?

Consider These Facts:

• The complete CDC-recommended vaccine schedule now contains 69 vaccine doses throughout childhood

• 32 of these doses (almost half of the entire vaccine schedule) are completed by 1 year of age

• In the 1980s, kids only received a total of about 24 vaccine doses by 18 years of age. Today, infants receive 24 doses by 6 months

• In the 1980s, children got 7 injections total. Today, kids get 51 injections – more than a 600% increase (Note: some injections contain multiple vaccines in each shot, such as MMR and DTaP)

• Infants today receive as many as 9 vaccines in one day

Our prior generation benefitted from limited vaccination against the most serious infectious diseases: polio, diphtheria, measles, smallpox. We can be thankful that we no longer face significant problems with these illnesses in our society. Today’s vaccination schedule includes vaccines for many more diseases which are not nearly as dangerous to most healthy children in our country: the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chicken pox, and others.

Vaccination is more than just a handful of shots for your child; it is a complex medical treatment which should be thoroughly discussed, both risks and benefits, between you and your doctor.

Asking questions does not make you anti-vaccination…it makes you pro-immunity educa