Mandatory Vaccination Paper

There are numerous evidences present in the literature to support the usefulness of vaccination for the treatment of viral infections such as Polio, Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Small Pox (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2013). A person is given a shot once for these diseases and seldom need another shot. Health agencies are now able to make statement such as the eradication of Small Pox, Polio and Measles (College of Phycisian of Philadelphia, 2015). The efforts toward polio and measles eradication in the Americas have been possible only mainly because there was a very high level of political commitment and collaboration among governments of the region (Knobler, Lederberg, & Pray, 2002).

The policies employed to achieve the level of success

Unwillingness of health care workers to take vaccination forces Governments and institutions to enact the mandatory vaccination process. Multiple strategies to enhance vaccination rate for healthcare workers in a large Midwestern health care organization with 26,000 employees remained low until vaccination was made mandatory for employment and the rate increased from less than 50% to 95% (Babcock, Gemeinhart, Jones, Dunagan, & Woeltje, 2010) . This shows that mandatory vaccination is effective in increasing the vaccination rate. Healthcare workers were willing to be vaccinated given the choice of vaccination or loss of employment. Their previous refusal to be vaccinated may not be deep rooted. According to this study, mass vaccination did result in a significant reduction in the number of patients and health care workers who became ill due to the flu. Making vaccine mandatory for health care workers is for the protection of patients, staff and other. If vaccinated health care workers are protected from the flu, it would help protect their patient whose immune system may already be compromised. Hopefully there will be a reduction in the number of persons who become ill by the flu and also reduce the number of fatalities attributed to the

A renowned research group concluded last year that the public health community has been guilty of over-estimating vaccine effectiveness in order to encourage vaccination (Babcock, Gemeinhart, Jones, Dunagan, & Woeltje, 2010). According to the CDC (2015), effectiveness of the vaccine varies from year to year so there is no guarantee that nurses who receive the vaccination would be protected from the flu virus and therefore no protection of patient results from having the vaccination. A medical literature review in July, 2013, found vaccinated health-care workers had no measurable benefit on flu rates or the number of related complications of long-term-care residents (Weeks, 2014) . The Center for Disease Control and Prevention found the quality of evidence for reduced influenza death and total number of cases among patients to be moderate and low, respectively (Weeks,