POST 7 - CURRENT ISSUES: THE ANTI-VACCINE MOVEMENT

I want to talk about the anti-vaccine movement. I am going to talk with data (could be boring, but its only the truth). In 1988 when WHO (OMS) started with the polio vaccine campaign, polio left more than a thousand children paralyzed every day. In 2001 there were a lot less than a thousand cases in the whole year, today there is more than 73 countries over the world which were declared free from polio.

Another case, Smallpox was caused by the variola virus that emerged in human populations around the year 10,000 BC. It was such a lethal disease that in some ancient cultures it was forbidden to name children until they contracted the disease and survived it. Their mortality rate was up to 30% of infected patients. That means thousands of death children, today the smallpox is considered eradicated since 1980.

These are just two examples of what vaccines have meant for the human being. However, there is a new trend that calls not to vaccinate children, who sustain their movement in data that is not very verifiable. I understand, it seems logical that "the natural" is better than "artificial" but it seems that humanity has forgotten that millions of children who died of diseases, our system has forgotten how to defend ourselves against the new outbreaks that are arising from this lack of vaccination, this movement puts millions of lives at risk, it is something that should not be allowed.