The Importance Of Vaccines

“The use of vaccines has greatly reduced the morbidity and mortality attributable to several childhood diseases. Childhood vaccinations remain some of the most favorable and cost-effective prevention strategies available,” states Matthew Davis, the Chief of Academic General Pediatrics and Primary Care in the Department of Pediatrics at Northwestern Medicine, in a 2002 research study done in many different countries (Davis et al. 1982). Childhood vaccinations have allowed the world to be where it is today by saving lives and preventing disease. However, research has shown that vaccines do cost a substantial amount of money and could potentially cause doctors and pediatricians to lose money upon administration. This difference in opinion about

A 2011 research study written by Dr. Sachiko Ozawa and published in the Journal of Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed healthcare journal, stated, “We estimate the benefits of averting 6.4 million vaccine-preventable child deaths in the Decade of Vaccines to be worth $231 billion to those who are at risk of death” (Ozawa et al. 4). If these children are vaccinated and are saved from death, that $231 billion will be saved and can be used for many other needed problems, thus benefiting a large amount of people. In doing this, these vaccines may create more wealth for certain people, thus improving the economy. In 2012, Andrew Mirelman and Sachiko Ozawa conducted a study in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) to find the economic and social benefits of vaccinating children. By covering 90% of these countries with certain vaccinations, India is predicted to save (U.S. dollars) 9.1 billion, China 5.8 billion, Russian Federation 560 million, South Africa 400 million, and Brazil 18 million (Mirelman et al. 455). By vaccinating countries, the savings are tremendous, because almost all of their country was vaccinated. Vaccines are helping these countries to improve their economies, showing the importance that vaccines are playing in the advancement of these countries. They are saving money in many different countries, which also may have the same effect in the

However, there are some limitations that are put on this solution, such as the cost to transport these vaccinations around the world. Although this research has shown that the cost benefits outweigh the negatives, transporting these vaccines will take a lot of work and could be affected by the geography of some places. If this solution is implicated, a lot of people may be saved and a lot of money could be saved, but nothing can be said for certain. According to Katja Becker and Ying Hu, both researchers at the Interdisciplinary Research Center at Justus Liebig University in Germany, and authors of the International Journal of Medical Microbiology, “The World Health Organization estimates that infectious diseases were the cause of 14.7 million deaths in 2001, accounting for 26% of total global mortality” (qtd. in Xiang et al.). People are dying all around the world, 26% of those people with infections that could be treated by vaccinations. This shows that vaccines are very important to the world because they are able to prevent these diseases from coming about, thus reducing the mortality rate. Vaccines are a very relevant topic to the world today, and should not go