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Why does my child need a vaccine for a disease that is rare in the United States?

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There are two important reasons why we need to vaccinate for rare diseases:source: 1

  1. Vaccines are the reason many diseases are rare occurrences in the United States. If we stop vaccinating, then these diseases may come back.source: 2
  2. Diseases can travel. Many countries have not yet had the success the United States has had with vaccinating its children, so these diseases are still common in many parts of the world. When unvaccinated people travel, diseases may travel with them.source: 3

Key Evidence

Polio is a good example of why vaccines are important. Polio used to be one of the most feared diseases in the United States. When the worst outbreak occurred in 1952, nearly 60,000 people in the United States were infected, more than 21,000 were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died.source: 4,source: 5

  • Due to vaccines, the United States had eliminated polio by 1979.source: 5
  • But due to low vaccination rates in some communities, polio returned to the United States in 2022.source: 6
  • Thanks to a successful vaccination program, most people in the United States are protected from polio.source: 7
  • However, people who are not vaccinated or who haven’t received all recommended doses may be at risk of getting polio. The disease still occurs in other parts of the world. It only takes one person with polio traveling from another country to bring polio into the United States.source: 7

Now a once rare disease can be a risk to children who are not vaccinated.

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A Deeper Dive: Why we will always need to vaccinate for some diseases

Some diseases can be eradicated (wiped off the face of the earth) thanks to vaccines. But others might not ever be eradicated. That means we will always have to vaccinate against them. The reason has a lot to do with how a disease spreads.

Smallpox is the only human disease that we have been able to eradicate so far. We were able to eradicate it by 1980 thanks to vaccination and because it only spread among humans.source: 8,source: 9 We have come close to eradicating polio through vaccination.source: 10 But we are not there yet. One of the biggest reasons is because of misinformation that discourages vaccination persists in certain parts of the world.source: 11

Some diseases will be harder or impossible to eradicate. For example, the germ that causes tetanus is found in soil.source: 12 There is no way we can ensure that every patch of soil in the world is free of tetanus. So we will always need to get a tetanus vaccine. Flu is a disease we see every year. The virus that causes the flu is constantly changing, and people can get infected with some flu viruses from animals.source: 13,source: 14,source: 15

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