Introduction
The vaccines used today are subject to strict regulations and are generally well tolerated. Nevertheless, there are still many critical voices warning against vaccinations in babies or infants. Objectively, however, it can be said that complications besides local irritations are extremely rare.
The fear of vaccinations in babies must of course be taken seriously. Accordingly, it is important to educate about the risks of vaccination and, in contrast, the higher risk of the respective diseases and their consequences if not vaccinated. The advantages of a high vaccination rate for your own baby and the general public outweigh the risks in any case.
What are the side effects?
The side effects of a vaccination can be further divided. First of all, one must distinguish between vaccination reactions, vaccination diseases, complications and unproven claims. Vaccination reactions are with 1:100 the most frequent side effects of a vaccination.
They are again distinguished according to the time of their occurrence, whereby there are no differences to other age groups. As a result of the pain of the injection, babies may cry out loud and shrill for a longer period of time. Immediately after the vaccination, faintinglike states or a fainting (syncope) may occur.
The harbingers of this circulatory failure include increased cold sweat, paleness and dizziness. This reaction often occurs in adolescents and young adults. In babies, circulatory reactions directly after vaccination are extremely rare.
They tend to be rather weak and exhausted. However, this is no cause for concern. Only in some premature babies who, for example, had a problem with breathing after birth, the first vaccination is administered under in-patient supervision for safety reasons.
In contrast to babies born at maturity, these babies sometimes experience a drop in heart rate or oxygen levels after vaccination. The hospital can then react promptly and appropriately. Within the first three days after a vaccination, redness, swelling or pain at the vaccination site may occur.
In addition, general symptoms such as a rise in temperature, cold-like symptoms or gastrointestinal problems with diarrhoea and vomiting may occur. Vaccination diseases occur after vaccination with a live vaccine, such as the MMR vaccine. For example, about one to four weeks after a measles–mumps–rubella vaccination, baby may have measles vaccination.
The frequency of these vaccination diseases is max. 5%. Vaccination complications are febrile convulsions, inflammation of the nerves (neuritis) or allergic reactions.
To be distinguished from these are the very rarely occurring vaccination damages, which result in a permanent health impairment. In the case of vaccination damage, there is an obligation to notify the public health department. Side effects for which there is no evidence and which are reported purely hypothetically without any scientific basis often cause unnecessary anxiety.
For example, there is no well-founded evidence that MMR vaccination leads to autism, inflammatory bowel disease or childhood diabetes. Such assertions must always be critically questioned. Older vaccines, which often led to complications, were the vaccinations against smallpox, tuberculosis and polio.
Today, vaccination against smallpox and tuberculosis is no longer recommended and the polio vaccine has been replaced by a tolerable vaccine. Complications of the vaccination are febrile convulsions, inflammation of the nerves (neuritis) or allergic reaction. To be distinguished from these are the very rarely occurring vaccination complications, which result in a permanent health impairment.
In the case of vaccination damage, there is an obligation to notify the public health department. Side effects for which there is no evidence and which are reported purely hypothetically without any scientific basis often cause unnecessary anxiety. For example, there is no well-founded evidence that MMR vaccination leads to autism, inflammatory bowel disease or childhood diabetes.
Such assertions must always be critically questioned. Older vaccines, which often led to complications, were the vaccinations against smallpox, tuberculosis and polio. Today, vaccination against smallpox and tuberculosis is no longer recommended and the polio vaccine has been replaced by a tolerable vaccine.
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