Misconceptions About The Invisible Protector

Every of our thinking has to do with what we grow up to hear, learn and accommodate in our brains, either from our parents or the people in our spaces while growing up.

I grew up in a crowdy environment that has lot of children and family involved and everyone with their mentality and orientation of grooming their families.
Though my parents don't joke with our vaccinations but I learnt from neighbors who would refused that their children get vaccinated that vaccination kills and paralyzes children.

Vaccination kills or paralyze children? But my parents always get my siblings and I vaccinated especially when the health workers comes around to the community.
That was the myth and misconceptions that battled with the orientation my parents built me with about vaccination.

Later on, passing teenage years and becoming an adult, I realized where the real problem was. For every misconceptions, there would have been a rumor of misinformation sparkling around.

Few years ago, I started working with an organization that has to do with maternal and child healthcare and I got to realize the reasons why parents especially mothers refuses to get their children vaccinated most especially children between the ages of 0 and 15months old.

From the research and feedback, after mothers take their children for vaccination, the babies suffer from a very high temperature that they might have to take them back to the hospital again for checkup.
Some children's hands or thighs may end up getting swollen, and growing up it may affect their walking mode.
This and many more made these mothers come to the conclusion that vaccination causes their children more harm than good which is false.

One of the craziest thing I've also heard about vaccination is at the time when Corona virus was rampant in the world and people were urged and educated to take the Covid-19 vaccine but the most shocking thing was the rumors circulating that within a certain period of time that the vaccine stays in the body system, it will eventually kill whoever takes the vaccine and that Corona virus wasn't real.

This caused so many people to run off from getting the vaccine and even those who got the first dose didn't bother to take the rest of the dose

Another craziest one was few weeks before HPV vaccine was announced to be out for girl-children between the ages of 9 and 14. The whole rumor escalated that the vaccine was made to put a reduction to population in Africa and reducing child bearing. This caused most mothers to refuse in allowing their girls get the HPV vaccine.

Moreover, the vaccine was made to prevent any future cancerous diseases for the girl child when she becomes a grown up but this main purpose has been overshadowed by the false information and rumors which caused the low rate in the uptake of the vaccine.

For me, vaccination is a very serious issue we don't want to take with levity hands.
Children who are denied taking their complete vaccine routine tends to suffer from measles, polio, hepatitis B, rotavirus, mumps and many others and that is why we must ensure that every baby in our care gets their complete (not stopping halfway) vaccination till a year 6 months (18months) and then they can start getting vitamin A immunization from the outreach health workers every 6 months till they clock 5 years of age.

These vaccines are always available in the primary healthcare centers and/or private hospitals but due to the claim of some health officials that a vaccine can't be open or cut if they don't get the complete number of children to take the vaccine then they won't be able to open that particular vaccine because the rest would waste and they must be accountable for every vaccine collected by their facilities.

This also causes part of the reason why some people fail to get the complete vaccination for their kids.

Vaccination is very important and we must always put it in mind that for every healthy child you desire having, you must ensure they are equipped well enough to battle with any future diseases and conquer them.