Immunization makes people immune to disease by injecting tiny, harmless organism into a person. This is known as inoculation and the medicine used in immunization, is known as Vaccine. Immunization gives people the ability to resist infection temporally or permanently.
What then are childhood diseases that can be changed guarded against by immunization. These include Cholera, poliomyelitis, tetanus, diphtheria, whooping-cough and measles.
The importance of immunization cannot be over-emphasized, because the adverse effects of not giving immunization to our children are very well-know to us. For instance, most people live in congested houses thereby endangering the health of the young ones who are mostly susceptible to infections. The conditions in our locality make immunization a must for our children.
It is important to immunize our children again because in certain diseases, preventing the diseases is more feasible than curing. It is known that tetanus, for instance, does not readily answer to treatment but may be prevented by inoculation.
Most of the childhood diseases are highly infectious. Children sickness like whooping-cough, diphtheria, measles and cholera can be spread from one child to another. If an epidemic must be averted in our habitat, our children then must be immunized. For it is only through immunization that uninfected children would be saved the scourge of getting the sickness from infected ones in the neighborhood.
In most cases mothers have shied away from taking their children to the immunization centers because of certain misconceptions. Firstly it is relatively easier to immunize our children these days. Because of government's seriousness with primary health care center's. Hospitals, health center's, children hospitals and maternity homes are some of the places where our children can be immunized against childhood diseases.
Secondly, it cost nothing for parents to immunize their children. The government is totally committed to child and mother's health, that virtually the whole cost is borne by the authorities. Reputable world organization like WHO and UNICEF are all deep in the task to provide immunization for our children. Their involvement has greatly brought the service within the reach of all those who would want to benefit from the service.
Our nation would be greatly helped if our children are immunized against these deadly childhood diseases. They would have been given the start to grow into study youths who would be involved in the development of society.