Why childhood vaccines are a public health success story

Vaccines are estimated to have prevented 154 million deaths Since the launch of EPI. This number includes 146 million children under the age of five. Vaccination efforts are estimated to have reduced infant mortality by 40% and added 10 billion years of healthy life to the global population.

Childhood vaccination is a success story. But concerns about the vaccine remain. This appears to be especially true with Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s health agencies starting in January. This week, let’s take a look at what they’re saying, and the actual evidence for childhood vaccines.

WHO joins health agencies around the world in recommending a set of vaccines for infants and young children. Some vaccines, such as the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, can provide some protection against TB and are recommended from birth. Other vaccines, such as whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough vaccine, are usually given as a single injection and are introduced at eight weeks. Additional vaccinations and booster doses follow.

The idea is to protect babies as quickly as possible, said Kaja Abbas of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK and Nagasaki University in Japan.

The full vaccination program will depend on which infections pose the greatest risk and will vary from country to country. In the U.S., the recommended timeline is set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and states can choose to enact vaccine mandates or allow various exemptions.

Some scientists worry about how those rules might change when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January. Trump has laid out his picks for top administration officials, including the person to lead the country’s health agency. These individuals must be confirmed by the Senate to serve in these roles, but Trump appears intent on surrounding himself with vaccine skeptics.

First, Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has long been a prominent anti-vaxxer with a record of spreading false information about vaccines.