Many are bacteria, inhaled by the victim, infecting several areas of the body. Accordingly, the bacteria lives and grows while its victim dies. Other diseases are caused by viruses; a non-living infection that attacks the immune system and other living cells. Therefore, children are much more vulnerable to diseases because of their weak immune systems considering they have not lived long enough to build immunities for such infections. For that reason, to protect themselves, vaccinations should remain mandatory for all children. Vaccines protect against abhorrent diseases; they augment herd immunity, and they do not cause autism.
To begin, vaccines protect against abhorrent diseases. For thousands of years, smallpox epidemics posed a deadly threat, claiming lives of millions of people and leaving several others scarred for life[ CITATION Ric06 l 4105 ]. But the discovery of a vaccination in the late 1700s marked a turning point [ CITATION Ric06 l 4105 ]. Hence, by the end of the 1970s, smallpox, a dangerous and highly contagious viral disease registered in ancient Egypt in 1350 B.C, had been wiped out completely. In fact, it was the first affliction to be eradicated globally by human action. As a result, illnesses such as diphtheria and congenital rubella are virtually non-existent in North America today. Equally important, some mandatory vaccines prevent foreign diseases because immigrants from other countries may bring extremely harmful pathogens. Historically, polio was a mandatory immunization. One might question why it would be mandatory since it is not common in our country. Granting all this, vaccines are exactly why these sorts of diseases are uncommon in our country (Bartlett, 2012). Moreover, measles is a childhood sickness killing almost 500 000 children every year in the developing world, that is most prevented by vaccinations. As a matter of fact, Measles Initiative set up in 2001, aimed to reduce deaths by 90% by 2010 [ CITATION Ric06 l 4105 ].
