Vaccine Safety: The Facts
Why vaccinate? Vaccines save lives and protect against the spread of disease. If you decide not
to immunize your child, you put your child at risk. Your child could catch a disease that is
dangerous or deadly. Getting vaccinated is much better than getting the disease.
Your pediatrician knows that you care about your child’s health and safety. That’s why you need
to get all the scientific facts from a medical professional you can trust before making any
decisions based on stories you may have seen or heard on TV, the Internet, or from other
parents. Your pediatrician cares about your child too and wants you to know that…
- Vaccines work. They have kept children healthy and have saved millions of lives for more than
50 years. Most childhood vaccines are 90% to 99% effective in preventing disease. And if a
vaccinated child does get the disease, the symptoms are usually less serious than in a child who
hasn’t been vaccinated. There may be mild side effects, like swelling where the shot was given,
but they do not last long. And it is rare for side effects to be serious.
- Vaccines are safe. All vaccines must be tested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The
FDA will not let a vaccine be given unless it has been proven to be safe and to work well in
children. The data get reviewed again by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),
the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Academy of Family Physicians before a
vaccine is officially recommended to be given to children. Also, the FDA monitors where and how
vaccines are made. The places where vaccines are made must be licensed. They are regularly
inspected and each vaccine lot is safety-tested.
- Vaccines are necessary. Your pediatrician believes that your children should receive all
recommended childhood vaccines. In the United States vaccines have protected children and
continue to protect children from many diseases. However, in many parts of the world many
vaccine-preventable diseases are still common. Since diseases may be brought into the United
States by Americans who travel abroad or from people visiting areas with current disease
outbreaks it's important that your children are vaccinated.
Also, children with certain health problems may not be able to get some vaccines or may need to
get them later. Since each child is different, your child’s doctor will know what is best for your
child. You should get information about each vaccine at the doctor’s office. Ask your child’s doctor
if you don’t understand what you’ve read.
- Vaccines are studied. To make sure the vaccine continues to be safe, the FDA and the CDC
created the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). All doctors must report serious
side effects of vaccines to VAERS so they can be studied. Parents can also file reports with
VAERS. For more information about VAERS, visit www.vaers.hhs.gov or call the toll-free VAERS
information line at 800/822-7967. Based on VAERS reports, vaccine safety professionals
continuously look for any problem with a vaccine, study the problem, and decide what to do. And if
there is a problem, changes are made as soon as possible. For example,
- If a vaccine is no longer safe, it is no longer given.
- If there are new side effects, safety alerts are sent out to your health care providers.
Another way the CDC checks vaccine safety is by studying information about side effects
collected from 8 large insurance companies. The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) helps
identify if there are any serious problems or safety issues from the records of thousands of
children. In the rare case that a child has serious side effects to a vaccine, parents can
contact the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) at 800/338-2382 or
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