Airman 1st Class Andrew McCutchen receives an immunization. U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Nathan Bevier

Parents are asked to approve a variety of immunizations for their children. The various recommended vaccines are given beginning within a few months of birth and continue for the next dozen years and more. Some parents believe, without a scientific basis, that vaccines routinely harm children and that children are better off unvaccinated.

The United States Army has some experience with infectious disease. They keep records. The historical data for some diseases which we now prevent with a vaccine is available on line. Here are just some of the costs to the Army and the troops.
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Enrique Ruiz was very sick when he went to the emergency room at New York City’s Lincoln Hospital in April. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and bronchitis. Less than a week later, he was being treated for second degree burns on his neck and chest.

Sunday’s New York Post reported on the ordeal by fire that Enrique Ruiz suffered at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx. As doctors were trying to insert a breathing tube, Ruiz caught fire. The pain was severe enough that he woke up from sedation. An electronic scalpel being used to cut an opening in his neck combined with the oxygen he was being given causing a flash fire around the surgical site.
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Defense Department:

Lt. Christopher E. Mosko, 28, of Pittsford, N.Y., died April 26 while conducting combat operations in Nawa district, Ghazni province, Afghanistan. Mosko was assigned as a Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Platoon Commander to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, Afghanistan. Mosko was stationed at EOD Mobile Unit 3, San Diego, Calif.

Lt. Mosko lived in Pittsford, a suburb of Rochester, NY, for several years. His father, on his blog, has corrected some of the media reporting.
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The nurse depicted in this 2006 image was administering an intramuscular vaccination in the left shoulder muscle to a young girl. The nurse immobilized the girl’s arm by clutching it tightly, while the girl held up her sleeve in order to facilitate the procedure. CDC/ Judy Schmidt

Two deadly childhood illnesses are back in the news. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) raised all sorts of flags over the number of measles cases in the United States last year. The number of pertussis cases, also called whooping cough, is also rising rapidly across the nation.

The CDC publishes the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report every week. In that report is the data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System. The latest report is for week 16, ending April 21, 2012.
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USA in the UK

The Summer Olympics will take place in London From July 27 to August 12, 2012. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will travel to England to see the show and they will be bringing lots of souvenirs home with them. Without precautions, those souvenirs may include mumps or measles.

The United Kingdom has been struggles with large numbers of cases of these two illnesses for a decade. Much of the British public lost faith in childhood vaccines in the late 1990′s when the now debunked Wakefield paper on a link between the MMR vaccine and autism was published. An 2009-20010 outbreak of mumps in the New York City region that grew to almost 2,000 patients was traced to one tourist who had traveled to England.
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