Vaccines save money, and a lot , according to a study prepared by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore (USA) and published in the journal Health Affairs . Using a database that took into account 94 low- and middle-income countries during the period between 2011 and 2020, the researchers calculated that if a vaccination program for ten diseases were applied globally , whose cost would be 34,000 million dollars, could save 586,000 million . In other words, for every dollar spent on a vaccine, 44 are saved .
These ten diseases included in the investigation are hepatitis B, measles, meningitis type A, rotavirus, Japanese encephalitis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, rubella, pneumococcus, yellow fever and human papilloma . Every year, vaccine-preventable diseases kill 2.4 million children worldwide , according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The reports of this organization confirm that only thanks to immunization against whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus and measles, two to three million deaths are prevented annually . If vaccination coverage were expanded throughout the world by the public health of the countries, another million and a half deaths would be avoided.
In general, and despite the pressure exerted by anti-vaccine groups , whose arguments lack scientific, statistical, social and economic basis, in each country it is recommended that children be vaccinated as soon as the immune system of each individual is capable to respond to the immunization provided by the vaccines, and to receive the subsequent booster doses that are necessary to achieve the best sanitary protection. In addition, there are also international recommendations from the World Health Organization.
The reality is that medical and scientific evidence shows that the benefits of avoiding millions of deaths from infectious diseases more than outweigh the adverse side effects that immunization could very rarely bring . To cite some data, mass vaccination during the 19th and 20th centuries helped eradicate smallpox , which until then had killed one in seven children in Europe. Thanks to the vaccine, poliomyelitis, which wreaked havoc among Spanish children in the early 1960s , has practically been eradicated.
The incidence of invasive infection with Haemophilus influenzae, a leading cause of bacterial meningitis and other serious diseases in children, has decreased by 99% in the United States since the introduction of the vaccine in 1988. It is estimated that vaccination of all American children born in a specific year, from birth to adolescence, prevent 30,000 deaths and prevent 14 million infections.
Regardless of the childhood vaccination schedule and the vaccines required when traveling to certain countries, some others such as tetanus, influenza or pneumonia are recommended in many circumstances in the form of what is called booster doses. For older people, it is especially recommended that they do not stop getting vaccinated against pneumonia and influenza, diseases that after a certain age are even more dangerous and responsible for many deaths.
Photo credit: Sandra Rugio
