Immunizations in the United States: Introduction

00:00 In this lecture we’re going to discuss Pediatric Immunizations in the United States. The immunization is the most effective therapy against disease in the history of man. More lives have been saved by immunization than just about anything else except perhaps the invention of the _____. States often require vaccines for school and requirements for school vary by states with some doing it and some not doing it but unvaccinated children are more likely to be susceptible to disease.

00:35 So vaccination should be accepted ubiquitously. It’s not but it should be. Most vaccines are extremely safe. I would walk through them all and will look at the safety profile of them all but for now let’s just remember they are safe. Vaccines do not cause autism. This myth was created by a British doctor who wanted to profit by marketing his own vaccine. Vaccines do not cause autism. For the latest vaccine schedule about how children should receive vaccines, the place to go is the Center for Disease Control at cdc.gov. Here is the schedule for the cdc.gov currently.

01:20 You can see there are lot of different vaccines. They’ve color coded their chart to make it very easy to understand. The yellow boxes are when vaccines should be given to children as a part of their routine schedule. The green boxes are catch-up times, in other words if a child has not received a vaccine for whatever reason this is the time when it can be given again to catch them up and the purple boxes are specific times when under certain circumstances a vaccine should be given. It’s all explained at the website but I’m going to go through the important vaccines one at a time so we can understand them together.