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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Fladun / Vaccination, the choice is no choice

No Play 300dpiI LEAN a bit toward alternative therapies. When I have, say, a sore throat, I try to get some rest, take honey-and-lemon drinks and gargle with saltwater before I head to our family doctor for a prescription for antibiotics.

We are really lucky to have so many options these days. Sore back? Try chiropractic, physiotherapy, massage, acupuncture, exercise and so on and, if all else fails, bring out the big guns and go down a more serious medical path.

But along with choice comes responsibility and, of course, one thing about parenting is that your choice can have implications not only for your own kids but someone else’s baby or child as well.

One choice that I really have problems with is the no-vaccination lobby. I get being nervous about vaccinations, I really do; the idea of someone injecting a foreign substance into the beautiful body of my little bundle of joy always gave me the heebie-jeebies. I cried much more than my tiny son when he had his first vaccination.

Like many new mums, I’d heard and read that vaccination could give my boy high temperatures, that it could contribute to ADHD, that is could ruin his developing immune system and cause asthma, that it is linked to autism and even SIDS. I was sure he was going to get a bad batch, poor fellow. It all seemed pretty scary.

I related my fears to my elderly mum, a retired pharmacist who told me  about some of the things that happened to children when she was young – grim stories about polio, measles and whooping cough.

Yes, she said, there are risks involved in vaccination but they are vanishingly small. Everything in life involves risk. Doing something involves risk. Not doing something also involves risk, and in the case of vaccination not doing something involves significantly higher risk, not only for your own kids but for other children as well.

This was certainly brought home recently by the tragic death, from whooping cough, of a young boy in WA.

So I was pretty pleased when I heard that the Federal government announce a new campaign to improve childhood vaccination rates. Both sides of politics are supporting this, which is a very good thing.

I know there will be arguments about the “no jab, no pay” policy of denying childcare benefits to parents who do not have their children vaccinated, but the main thing is that there needs to be a big push to raise vaccination rates that have fallen significantly and pose a public health risk.

This requires a serious education campaign to set out the facts and counter some of the misinformation generated by the tiny but vocal anti-vaccination lobby.

There’s no shortage of highly reliable vaccination information available from doctors, from health departments and other authoritative sources like the US centres for disease control and prevention. But a new effort to engage parents and families would be pretty timely.

I understand the emotional hesitation some parents have about vaccination, but this is one area of parenting where science and clear thinking need to prevail – not only for our own families but for all our kids.

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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