Polio and Measles Diseases - Essay Example

Theory Paper Polio and measles are two diseases that are known to interfere with children’s health at very tender ages. Polio is a viral disease and therefore has no cure; the body develops self-immunization after an infection. However, by the time this happens, its victims are normally paralyzed or severely handicapped if not dead altogether. Measles, on the other hand, is a bacterial infection and has a cure. However, the disease infects rapidly and its spread through the body of its victims takes place so fast that death results in a matter of hours of infection. One other feature exhibited by these two diseases is that they are communicable; polio is the only known virus that is transferred from a person to another without contact (Fogel and Woods 95). Measles too is air borne; this implies that an outbreak of either of the diseases is likely to infect very many children. To curb the effect of these two diseases, the government imposes a compulsory immunization for all babies in the country. These are executed by the health facilities that a mother delivers in. These immunization services are offered freely at government facilities and at relatively low costs in private health facilities since the government subsidizes their costs. Immunization is a way of boosting the body’s immunity in preparation for the attack of the disease. In some cases, the immunization process involves the introduction of the virus into the bodies of the patients after which the body develops its own immunity in time with the help of other drugs; the virus could also be possibly made docile. The body thus develops effective defense system for attacks that will not possibly take place. This way, the body becomes guaranteed of effective immunity from all possible future inversions. Immunization has proven to be the most effective way of fighting diseases that are not easily controlled. It is the only way that the body easily develops defense enough to fight viral infections whose cures are always hard to determine. However, the immunization process has its pitfalls; childhood vaccination is a risky process. This is in the sense that the period between the birth of a child to the receipt of the vaccination is enough to make one susceptible to severe attack of the virus or disease depending on its prevalence in the area that a child is raised. Those vaccinated are children below five years of age. This provides for a possibility that a child can live for five years without being vaccinated which is utterly risky. An intervention to this risk would be a possible vaccination of children before they are born. Children draw their immunity from their mothers; while still at the fetal stage, the human body engages in minimal activities. In fact, all the energy a fetus needs is to enable its cells to stay alive. Its mother aids its ingestion process and so are many other processes that make it stay alive. In case of an infection at this stage, the fetus borrows the defense mechanism of its mother. The relationship that exists between a mother and the fetus is thus intense and life sustaining. The idea of inducing this vaccination at this stage could be a huge success. The development of the pregnancy is an indication of the growth of the baby inside the uterus; it gets to a point in the course of the pregnancy, at about seven to eight months, that the child is almost fully developed. At this stage, the fetus has developed all the essential organs and can live on its own should it be detached from its mother. At this stage, should the baby get an infection, its young body fights the infection on its own. It is at this stage that the vaccine is introduced straight into the fetus; introducing a poliovirus to the fetus at such a time will be effective in helping the body develop the required immunity in time since it borrows some of the defense mechanisms from its mother. The fully developed system of the mother thus helps the young body develop its own defense system in time to respond to the docile virus. This way, children born do not face the pain of an injection some of which turn catastrophic due to unsterilized immunization tool (Fogel and Woods 45). Pregnant women visit hospitals on monthly basis, there is no single case reported of an American woman who conceives a baby and stays on her own until delivery without paying a visit to either a gynecologist or any other medical practitioner thus a medical facility. It is on such visits that the women receive the vaccinations on behalf of their growing fetuses. Such a scenario gives the process a hundred percent efficacy without a doubt. Immunizations are necessitated by the prevalence of a disease in a particular region. However, when the government can ensure that there is no case whatsoever of the presence of the virus or bacteria in a region, then vaccinations would be rendered redundant. The virus causing polio is airborne but it only becomes so if there is a case of its infection in the neighborhood. It is not likely that the virus can travel in the air from Mexico to Atlanta, Georgia. Complete eradication of the virus in the region maybe the most efficient intervention to childhood vaccination. In the last twenty years, there has been no reported case of a yellow fever infection or chicken pox infection in the entire United States of America. The government succeeded in containing the spread of these deadly airborne diseases. This can be made possible by carrying out the fetal vaccination as well. The combined vaccination is the only effective way of ensuring that every single being in the country at the time of this control exercise is in deed free from infection. The process of containing and completely eradicating the prevalence of a disease is not difficult; it requires a complete assurance that those living in the country are not infected. This is assured through a confirmation exercise in which all citizens are tested and proven that in deed there is no single case of the virus. Following this confirmation are bans and test certificates of those getting into the country from other regions. This is effectively executed at American embassies in foreign countries. All that is required to achieve this would be a policy stating that for one to be awarded an American visa, one should conduct a measles and polio test and present the result to the issuing officers. In retrospect, vaccinations have provided efficient ways of assuring life without infections. However, there are just too many risks involved in the process. It thus becomes fundamental for the government to effect better, safe, and less risky ways of containing the spread of the deadly infections. Work Cited Fogel, Chris and Woods, Neil. Women's health care in advanced practice of nursing. New York: Springer Pub, 2008. Print. Read More