Pneumonia baby in PICU ward
Vaccine has been widely regarded as an effective and economical method to prevent and treat diseases and promote health. Children in all countries should undergo routine immunization to prevent major childhood diseases, which has become the key point of global public health policy implementation. From smallpox, measles to polio, the emergence of vaccines has directly and indirectly saved many lives, greatly reduced the incidence and mortality of diseases, and greatly reduced the burden on families and society.
However, some mothers are biased against vaccines, thinking that vaccines are not good. As long as the first-class vaccines are vaccinated free of charge according to national regulations, the second-class vaccines don’t need to be vaccinated. If their dolls are lucky, they won’t get sick without vaccination!
This kind of luck exists in the hearts of many young mothers. However, there are not so many accidents and not so many fortunes.
Ms. Zhang, a suburb of Chengdu, just gave birth to a lovely baby two months ago. She often takes the baby with her to exchange parenting experiences with other mothers in the community. Among the mothers in the community, when discussing whether it is necessary to take the second-class vaccine at their own expense, several mothers think that the second-class vaccine is not important. They say that if it is important, the country will definitely be included in the scope of free vaccination. Therefore, Ms. Zhang gave up the second type of vaccine. Who knows that two days ago, her baby stayed in the intensive care unit for nearly a month because of meningitis induced by pneumococcal infection. Although the infection has been controlled, the doctor said it may affect the child’s intellectual development … … Ms. Zhang regretted it very much. She said, I should never have listened to them and not given the baby pneumococcal vaccine … …
"extremely high priority" use to fully care for baby health
Early know? How many of them knew that they could turn into regret medicine and avoid tragedy?
Li Yunbi, director of PICU of Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, said: Vaccination is sure to protect children’s health. If there is no vaccine protection, I believe that many hospitals will be full of pediatrics. With regard to Ms. Zhang’s baby’s meningitis caused by pneumococcal infection, Director Li said: Pneumococcus will not only invade the child’s respiratory system, but also enter the blood, causing infections in many parts of the body, such as pneumonia, otitis media, bronchitis, meningitis, etc., especially meningitis caused by pneumococcal infection. Even if cured, it may leave serious sequelae such as deafness, paralysis and mental retardation; In severe cases, it may endanger the life safety of children. Therefore, pneumococcus is also known as the "health killer" of infants.
Pneumococcus (also known as Streptococcus pneumoniae) is one of the most common bacteria that can cause respiratory infections in children. It is widely colonized in human nasopharynx, and its carrying rate is 27% in developed countries and 85% in developing countries. It is spread by droplets, and children are its main carrier and transmission population. Infants and young children under one year old have weak resistance to pneumococcus because their immune system is not perfect. Once the weather gets cold and the baby catches a cold, pneumococcus will jump out to cause trouble.
In view of the serious threat of pneumococcal disease to children’s health, the World Health Organization (WHO) lists it as a disease that needs to be "very high priority" to be prevented by vaccine, while the frequently mentioned Japanese encephalitis and epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis are listed as diseases that need to be prevented by vaccine.
High-risk groups: the disease clutches infants under 1 year old.
The reporter learned in the interview that the number of cases of pneumococcal infection in children under 5 years old in China ranks second in the world, second only to India. The number of deaths due to pneumococcal infection ranks 10th in the world, and about 30,000 children under 5 years old die from pneumococcal infection every year. This number is much higher than the number of deaths caused by Hib infection. In the Asia-Pacific region, about one child dies of pneumococcal pneumonia every minute. In fact, the treatment of pneumococcal infection in primary hospitals in China is usually empirical treatment with antibiotics. Therefore, the infection status of pneumococcus in China may be underestimated.
Why does pneumococcus "prefer" infants under 1 year old? This is related to the development characteristics of the infant’s immune system. Newborn babies can get maternal antibodies from their mothers, but the maternal antibodies will gradually decrease over time. At the same time, the baby’s own immune system is constantly improving and the resistance is constantly increasing. However, after 6 months — Babies between 1 year old have almost disappeared from mother-to-child antibodies, and their own resistance is not perfect enough, so they have become a high-risk group infected with pneumococcal diseases.
In addition, non-exclusive breastfeeding, indoor air pollution and nutritional deficiency are all high-risk factors for pneumonia in infants, including pneumococcal pneumonia.
Vaccination is the most effective means to control diseases.
For diseases caused by pneumococcus, antibiotics should be used in treatment. However, in recent years, the drug resistance of pneumococcus has become a major challenge in clinical treatment. Antibiotic resistance increases the difficulty of treating pneumococcal diseases, lengthens the course of disease and increases the treatment cost accordingly. Therefore, prevention is far more important than treatment for pneumococcal invasive diseases.
"As the most economical and effective means to prevent infectious diseases, vaccination has achieved remarkable results in China." Huang Rongna, chief of the Department of Planning and Immunology of Chengdu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the reporter that according to the data released by National Health Commission, with the popularization of vaccines for more than 40 years, the incidence of various infectious diseases in China has dropped significantly.
As Ms. Zhang thinks, free "first-class seedlings" are more important than self-funded "second-class seedlings". Huang Rongna explained: This statement is incorrect. Whether the vaccine belongs to the first-class vaccine or the second-class vaccine is determined by the government according to the needs of disease prevention and control, comprehensively considering the safety, effectiveness, accessibility and financial affordability of the vaccine, and based on evidence-based scientific evaluation and demonstration. It doesn’t mean that "first-class seedlings" are important and "second-class seedlings" are not important. From the perspective of disease prevention, the second-class vaccine is as important as the first-class vaccine. It is recommended to vaccinate as much as possible if the baby’s physical condition and family economic conditions permit.
The influence of diseases on babies is not only at the physical level, but also short-lived infectious diseases and infectious diseases that can be quickly cured will leave a certain psychological shadow on children’s growth. Immunization not only protects individuals from a certain disease, but also avoids the long-term effects of the disease in physiological, emotional and cognitive development. Being protected by vaccination can make the baby grow up healthily, stay away from diseases and get all-round development of body, mind and intelligence.
Prevention is more important than treatment. Infants under 1 year old need to be extra vigilant.
In the interview, the reporter learned that invasive pneumococcal disease can be prevented, and strong and comprehensive protection can be achieved for infants and young children by injecting pneumococcal vaccine. The methods of preventing diseases can be divided into general prevention and specific prevention, which should complement each other and be closely combined.
General preventive measures are related to family environment, diet and travel. Ensure the clean environment and indoor air circulation at home, lead the baby to participate in outdoor exercise and pay attention to the balance of diet. Reduce taking infants and young children to public places, especially in the season of high incidence of respiratory diseases, because the spread probability of diseases in public places is high and children’s resistance is weak, and it is easy to induce diseases by combining the two. For the prevention of pneumococcal diseases, special attention should also be paid to maintaining good personal hygiene habits, such as covering your mouth and nose with paper towels when coughing or sneezing. Because the mode of transmission of pneumococcal disease is very hidden, it is possible to pass pneumococcal disease to your baby if you are not careful.
Specific prevention means that the vaccinator can acquire the immune ability of the corresponding disease through vaccination. Infants and young children under one year old are unable to resist the harm of pneumococcal invasive diseases through their own body ability because their immune system is not yet perfect. Therefore, the most effective prevention is to vaccinate the baby with pneumococcal vaccine for children. Therefore, from the age of 1.5 months, the baby should be vaccinated with pneumococcal vaccine and other related vaccines as soon as possible to avoid serious diseases caused by the gradual decline of immunity. (Reporter Yu Xingyu)
Encyclopedia of vaccination
1. Why should children be vaccinated?
When a child is born, his delicate body is threatened by many infectious diseases. Vaccine is recognized as one of the greatest scientific inventions in the world. Through vaccination, smallpox has been eliminated. Most countries and regions, including China, have achieved polio-free wild virus transmission, and efforts are being made to eliminate measles through vaccination. If vaccination is stopped, the immune barrier that we have built hard will disappear, and those diseases that are already rare will resurface, with disastrous consequences.
Second, how do parents choose their own vaccines for vaccination?
Parents and guardians of children can consider choosing non-EPI vaccine from the following angles: (1) Consult vaccination outpatient doctors, or inquire about relevant knowledge online, or consult local CDC doctors; (2) Understand the epidemic situation of peripheral diseases. Parents can complain to the CDC or the health administrative department in their jurisdiction if they are forced to promote vaccination by vaccination doctors, or if they are neglected by vaccination outpatient doctors because they choose free vaccines.
3. What should I do if the vaccination clinic tells me that there is a vaccine shortage and I can’t get it in time?
At present, affected by many factors such as supply and supervision process, some vaccines in the country are in short supply in stages, which has attracted great attention from the state and relevant departments. However, this is only a temporary phenomenon. It is suggested that we can wait for a while, and the vaccination clinic will notify us according to the age after the vaccines are in place. You can choose non-immunization program vaccine for alternative vaccination. For details, please consult the local vaccination clinic.
4. Are all vaccines in Chengdu safe?
A kind of vaccine (free of charge) is invited by the state, purchased by provincial disease control institutions, and then distributed to vaccination clinics step by step by provincial, municipal and county disease control institutions; The second-class vaccines (at their own expense) are centrally purchased by county-level disease control institutions on the provincial public resource trading platform, and vaccine production enterprises directly distribute them to county-level disease control institutions. All vaccines are purchased in the sunshine, ensuring the whole cold chain, so it is safe and reliable to vaccinate babies in regular vaccination clinics.