CONCERN: Infants are too young to get vaccinated.
Children are immunized in the first few months of life because several vaccine-preventable diseases infect them when they are very young. For example:
Pertussis infects about 8,000 children, causing five to ten deaths every year in the United States. Almost all of the cases are in children less than one year of age.
Children under two years old are 500 times more likely to catch Hib meningitis if someone with a Hib infection is living in the home.
About 90 percent of newborns whose mothers are infected with hepatitis B will contract hepatitis and go on to develop chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and possibly liver cancer.
For these reasons, it is very important for infants to be fully immunized against certain diseases by the time they are six months old.
Fortunately, young infants are surprisingly good at building immunity to viruses and bacteria. About 95 percent of children given DTaP, Hib, and hepatitis B virus vaccines will be fully protected by two years of age.
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