1.  Aren’t childhood diseases part of the normal process of a child’s development? Why should I prevent this by having the baby immunised?

• Some childhood diseases cause mild symptoms, but many can cause serious illness, disability, or even death in young children. Immunisation gives people the power to protect your baby from several of these serious childhood diseases.
• Diseases like measles and whooping cough used to affect so many children. Many children did not survive these diseases or were permanently harmed by them. Now, because of childhood immunisation, we don’t have to lose our children to these diseases, and they don’t have to suffer from them.
• Fully immunising your children gives them a better chance to develop fully.


2.  I haven’t seen these diseases you are talking about. Why should I vaccinate my child against something that doesn’t affect people here?
• While vaccines save millions of children from illness and death, the diseases they prevent still exist.
• Once parents stop vaccinating their children, or they delay immunisation, we have seen time after time that the diseases start making children sick again.
• Sometimes the germs that cause them are still in the environment. Other times newcomers or visitors bring them into the community. When children contract these diseases, they suffer. Some children even die.
• If you have any doubt about the need for vaccines, ask people in your parents’ or grandparents’ generation what it was like when so many children died or suffered permanent damage from diseases like measles and polio.


3.  Now that most of the old diseases are under control, don’t I put my child at unnecessary risk by vaccinating him/her?
• Thanks to vaccines, most young parents have never seen the devastating effects of diseases like polio, measles, or whooping cough (pertussis) and the harm that they can do to a child, family, or community. So, it’s easy to think these diseases are old or under control, but they still exist. Vaccines are the only practical way to prevent them.
• Vaccines have been extensively tested by scientists and doctors and are extremely safe.
• Some children get a slight fever or maybe redness or swelling where the needle goes in, but that is normal. Those mild side effects go away by themselves. Giving a lukewarm bath or paracetamol can help reduce fever.
• Very rarely, a child can experience something more serious. If this happens, the child should be checked by a health care provider as soon as possible to resolve the problem and report it. Reports get investigated to determine if the vaccine might have caused the problem. Usually there is another cause, and the vaccination around the same time was just a coincidence.


4.  What happens if I don’t immunise my child?
• If not immunised – or if immunised only once or twice with vaccines that need to be given three times – your child’s body will not be prepared to fight these diseases.
• If exposed to one of these diseases, your child could become seriously ill. 
• If many children in the community do not get immunised, then a disease like measles could affect many children and there could be a devastating outbreak of the disease in the community.


5.  Do children get protection from diseases from the mother during pregnancy/through breastfeeding?
• It is true that mothers pass on protection against some diseases to their baby during pregnancy and through breastfeeding (particularly in the thick, yellowish milk produced by the mother in the first few days after birth).
• The immunisation schedule is made so that when the protection from the mother is becoming weaker, the vaccinations will take over and protect the child.