Click on the photo to learn the innovative ways that immunizations are reaching children in Pakistan.As we think of this being World Immunization Week, we need to be aware that many parents in the US are choosing to opt out of immunizing their children against diseases that they don't see occuring in our country. What they don't realize is that even those children who have been immunized are put at higher risk when too many opt out. Ask someone in the health industry to explain the "herd protection factor" that is negatively impacted when too many opt out.
Those of us that were alive and aware of the polio epidemic in the United States in the 1950's need to tell our stories about classmates who were out for long periods of time and came back crippled, and others who didn't come back to school at all. As long as polio exists anywhere it can again spread. An unknown carrier of the virus is only a flight away from unwittingly infecting someone here who has not been protected.