After being a lifelong Warren resident and as a pediatrician for over 60 years, I never thought I would be writing an article in the tribune. I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to present information regarding the health of your children and vaccines. People that know me will know why and people that don’t know me, I hope will understand why I wanted to do this.

During my 60-plus years in practice, I have gone through many changes in medicine that have consistently improved the health of the people of this country. There always have been obstacles, but the scientific community continued to solve them. This article will not speak about those problems and how they were solved, but about vaccines and how they helped the health of my patients and all children in our country and the world.

As a medical student at Ohio State, my first rotation was at a children’s hospital in Columbus in 1958 that took me to the basement of the hospital. There I saw a basement full of patients, children and adults, with polio. They were in “iron lungs” that were helping them breathe. We were told half of them would not survive and the others would be chronically ill with respiratory, muscular disease or paralysis. What an introduction to medicine! Researchers were working on a vaccine. There is a vaccine now!

As a resident at a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh in 1961, pathologists asked if I could do a study because of an increase of a bacterial meningitis that was beginning to be seen more frequently on admissions to the hospital during the past 10 years. The result confirmed that it caused a greater number of infections than the other meningitis cases all together. As a senior resident, we had an epidemic of measles that caused admissions of pneumonia, meningitis and encephalitis. Some children were left with significant neurologic symptoms, hearing loss, school issues and other mental problems. There are vaccines now!

As a medical officer in the military at Fort Hood, Texas in 1964, there was an epidemic of rubella (three-day measles) in the U.S. it is a very important infection in pregnancy. If mothers are infected. the fetus can become infected and the newborn can have congenital problems.

Morbidity or mortality that are frequent. There is a vaccine now!

When I came back to Warren to start my practice, I only had the DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) and smallpox vaccines available to me. Treating patients for childhood diseases was an important part of my practice. Quarantine was required of all members of the family until the disease was over in the family member(s). It was not unusual to be called to the ER to see patients with high fevers, cough and seizures that had one of those illnesses. Because scientists and researchers studied and worked together, vaccines have been developed to prevent many diseases. Your doctor can give you a list.

The schedule suggested for the timing of the vaccines is not to prepare children for school, but to protect them at the age they are most likely to be infected. Requirement for school is for students to protect nonimmunized students or those immunocompromised or had other medical problems that prevented them from getting vaccines. As you know, this has happened recently in states across the country, including Ohio. Some of these occurred with exposure to adults who traveled to and from abroad. Immunizations are not only for the individual. It is a general public health measure to protect everyone. At the present time, there is an outbreak of measles in South Carolina that is rapidly progressing.

I feel that I should say something about the misinformation and inaccuracies promoted by social media, anti-vaxxers and, unfortunately, by the CDC. This has caused confusion and anxiety in parents and the general public about vaccines. Suggesting that vaccine schedules should be changed or vaccines eliminated is absolutely irresponsible and disrespectful to children, parents, and the scientists that have spent many years to make our health the best that it can be for everyone. I’m sure when a vaccine to prevent cancer is available, they would be first in line! More recently, the “new” committee on immunizations suggests delaying the hepatitis B vaccine that is given at birth for a later time. Hepatitis B infection in the newborn will cause chronic liver disease and cancer later in life.

I hope you can now understand why I wanted to do this. I don’t want to see children go through the hardship of diseases that are now preventable by appropriate vaccines. There will always be resistance by less-informed people, as has happened in the past. There will always be new medical problems that arise that require patience and understanding of accurate results of scientific evidence.

Love your children, care for them, protect them and be kind to each other.

Dr. John O. Vlad has been a practicing pediatrician in Warren since 1965.