Importance of Child vaccination - Schedule & Types

Why Vaccination is Necessary for Newborn / Baby?

Vaccinations not only keep newborn, baby safe by eliminating or significantly reducing harmful diseases that are used to transmit from child to child, but they also protect from potentially fatal diseases such as and not limited to-

• Tetanus (lockjaw)

• Diphtheria

• Hepatitis

• Measles

• Polio

• TB (tuberculosis) etc.

India has the greatest number of deaths among children under the age of five years (early childhood) globally, the majority of which are due to vaccine-preventable diseases.

Protection against communicable diseases requires timely child vaccination to develop immunity and minimize susceptibility to infection.

Delays in vaccines beyond the recommended time frame (i.e., untimely vaccination) could expose the newborn, baby or infant to a prolonged risk of disease and contribute to the ongoing transmission of diseases.

Therefore, vaccination timeliness is an important criterion for evaluating immunization program performance, since coverage estimates alone may lead to incorrect assumptions about herd immunity and transmission risk.

Herd immunity

It is more difficult for an infectious virus to spread in a community when a large number of individuals are immune to it. This is called herd immunity which can be typically achieved through vaccination.

Prior to vaccination, natural attainment of herd immunity was only possible with direct infection, which posed a threat of fatality.

Through herd immunity, even the people who are not immune to a disease can be protected, such as those who:

• never contracted the disease

• can't get vaccinated

• cannot become immune because due to a weak immune system

When about 70-80% of people are immune to an infection, the entire community is usually protected.