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Student Health

Here are the top ten reasons to protect your child by vaccinating him or her against serious diseases.

  1. Parents want to do everything possible to make sure their children are healthy and protected from preventable diseases. Vaccination is the best way to do that.
  2. Vaccination protects children from serious illness and complications of vaccine- preventable diseases which can include amputation of an arm or leg, paralysis of limbs, hearing loss, convulsions, brain damage, and death. 
  3. Vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, mumps, and whooping cough, are still a threat. They continue to infect U.S. children, resulting in hospitalizations and deaths every year.
  4. Though vaccination has led to a dramatic decline in the number of U.S. cases of several infectious diseases, some of these diseases are quite common in other countries and are brought to the U.S. by international travelers. If children are not vaccinated, they could easily get one of these diseases from a traveler or while traveling themselves.
  5. Outbreaks of preventable diseases occur when many parents decide not to vaccinate their children.
  6. Vaccination is safe and effective. All vaccines undergo long and careful review by scientists, doctors, and the federal government to make sure they are safe.
  7. Organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention all strongly support protecting children with recommended vaccinations.
  8. Vaccination protects others you care about, including family members, friends, and grandparents.
  9. If children aren’t vaccinated, they can spread disease to other children who are too young to be vaccinated or to people with weakened immune systems, such as transplant recipients and people with cancer. This could result in long-term complications and even death for these vulnerable people.
  10. We all have a public health commitment to our communities to protect each other and each other’s children by vaccinating our own family members.
Technical content reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Saint Paul, Minnesota
651- 6 47- 9009  
Item #P4016 (2/16) 

 

The flu, also known as influenza, is more dangerous than the common cold for children and poses a serious threat to the health and well-being of students and their families each year. 

  • Children commonly need medical care because of the flu,  especially before they turn 5, and each year an average of  20,000 children under the age of 5 are hospitalized  because of flu complications.  
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  estimates that since 2010, flu hospitalizations among  children younger than 5 years ranged from 7,000 to  26,000 in the United States.  
  • While relatively rare, even healthy children die from the flu  each year. Since 2004-2005, flu-related deaths in children  reported to CDC during regular flu seasons have ranged from  37 deaths to 171 deaths.  
  • Severe flu complications are most common in children  younger than 2, and children with chronic health problems,  like asthma and diabetes, are at especially high risk of  developing serious flu complications.
 

 

Why is the HPV vaccine important? 

  • About 14 million people, including teens, become infected with human papillomavirus (HPV) each year. HPV is a group of more than 150 related viruses that cause nearly all cervical cancers and many cancers of the vagina, vulva, penis, anus, rectum and oropharynx. HPV is named for the warts (papilloma) that some HPV types can cause.