Why Are Immunizations Important?

At Southwest Children's Clinic in West Jordan, UT, we know immunizations protect children from various diseases. But in addition to protecting your child from severe complications and even death, vaccines help stop the spread of disease in communities, known as herd immunity.

Immunization Protect Your Child

Vaccines are safe and usually cause no side effects. In addition, they help reduce the spread of disease and prevent sudden epidemics. Thus, when your child gets a vaccine, it strengthens their immune system.

Specifically, immunization allows their body to remember how to fight off that particular virus or bacteria if it ever comes in contact with it again.

Vaccination Is Safe and Very Effective

Vaccines are safe and effective, even for people with weakened immune systems. This is because they contain tiny amounts of dead or weakened viruses and bacteria called antigens. Furthermore, the CDC and other public health organizations regularly evaluate vaccines to ensure they are safe before they are approved.

Therefore, when your body encounters an antigen from a vaccine, it recognizes it as foreign and creates unique proteins (called antibodies) that help the immune system destroy the germ. When you or your child receives immunizations in West Jordan, UT, your immune system stores these antibodies to fight the germ if you get sick later.

Immunization Protects People You Care About

Vaccines also protect people around you through community immunity or herd immunity. Herd immunity is important because it reduces the number of vulnerable people at risk of getting sick or becoming disabled from diseases like measles, mumps, whooping cough, hepatitis B, and polio.

Specifically, vaccines help to prevent outbreaks by making it harder for infectious viruses and bacteria to spread.

Immunization Protects Generations of the Future

For generations to come, vaccinations will continue to protect the health and lives of people worldwide. Vaccines help prevent and control many of the diseases that kill children. Vaccines trick the body's immune system into thinking it has been infected with a disease and producing antibodies that destroy the germ before it can cause illness.

These antibodies last in the body for a long time, and you remember how to fight the disease when it happens again. Vaccines are essential in childhood and for adults who need booster shots to keep their immunity strong. Without them, vaccine-preventable diseases like tetanus (lockjaw) and diphtheria can be fatal or easily spread to others.

When everyone does their part by staying up to date with their vaccine schedule, future generations are protected from more dangerous mutations of existing diseases.

Call the Southwest Children's Clinic at (801) 563-1975 to schedule your child's immunizations in West Jordan, UT.