National Infant Immunization Week: April 25-May 2

If April is cesarean section awareness month, it makes sense that National Infant Immunization Week is in April as well. Keeping babies safe and healthy from the moment they are introduced to the world is the number one goal of every parent, grandparent, and pediatrician which is why immunizations are so important to learn about. Ultimately, the goal of National Infant Immunization Week (NIIW) is to stress the importance of protecting your infant from diseases which can be prevented through vaccines as well as honoring healthy communities everywhere.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) partner up with local, national, and international organizations to plan NIIW events across the globe. So far for 2009, there are only 3 states that are participating in specialized “kick off” events (Rhode Island, Washington, and Connecticut) as well as the U.S.-Mexico border will continue to take part in immunization awareness with hundreds of communities across America fueling media coverage and garnering attention for the cause.

NIIW has been a wonderful resource since 1994 for healthcare providers, parents, and caregivers across the globe regarding safety procedures involved in vaccination as well as record-keeping. This year, NIIW falls in the same week as European Immunization Week and Vaccination Week in the Americas with over sixty countries participating in connected events.

Infant immunization awareness is important because of the recent bad press it has been getting due to many theories on a link between immunizations and autism. None of these theories have been proven, but the fear is still lurking in the minds of all parents and parents-to-be. With NIIW focusing our attention away from the negative press and towards the accomplishments of immunization practices, the CDC hopes to renew the effort to vaccinate infants before they contract a deadly disease from which they could have been protected.

Part of the public outcry could be attributed to the lack of communication between parent and physician in order to keep information flowing. NIIW gives parents and physicians the chance to open up the lines of communication and encourage routine vaccination schedules, healthy children, and satisfied parents.

For parents, to keep yourself organized at home, make a chart of the immunization schedule and if any of them have you worried, ask your child’s doctor the best course of action and ask questions about the disease, the time frame in which infant immunizations are done, and any other worries you have. If payment is a worry, there is a government-funded program that was implemented in 1994 called Vaccine’s for Children (VFC), that helps pay for vaccinations in families who are unable to afford them.

In 2007, the statistic was shown that every day 11,000 babies are born that need 14 immunizations in their first two years, and Dr. Anne Schuchat—Director of the CDC’s National Center for Infectious and Respiratory Diseases—said that prevention is the main priority for these children, “We can now protect more children from more vaccine-preventable diseases than ever before….The suffering or death from a vaccine-preventable disease is an unnecessary human tragedy,” she continued to say that there is hope especially with the importance put on NIIW, “Let us renew our efforts to ensure that no child, adolescent or adult will needlessly suffer from a vaccine-preventable disease.”

Get your community involved! Create a NIIW event in your area to attract interest, invite the local news media to advertise and get the word out as well as report on the event as it happens. To get help with starting your own NIIW campaign, please visit the CDC website in order to gain new ideas, download flyers, research talking points, questions to ask, and other ways you can help.

To find an immunization facility that offers a Vaccines for Children’s program in your area call toll-free: 800-CDC-INFO.