Immunizations:

The "2004 Childhood Immunization Schedule" was published in the January 16, 2004, issue of the Center for Disease Control's "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" (MMWR).
The new schedule has significant changes and new vaccine recommendations that were not on the 2003 schedule.

Click here to download the issue of MMWR that contains the "2004 Childhood Immunization Schedule, United States, January-June 2004" and the "catch-up" Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule.

Breaking News & Immunization Resources (Including School & Day-Care Conditional Attendance Forms)

How do vaccines work?

As a parent, your children's health and safety are always on your mind. You know the value of safeguards like child-proof door latches, regular tooth brushing and pool-side security alarms. They are meant to prevent everything from minor illnesses to tragic death. Baby shots do the same thing--they work to safeguard your child from illness and death caused by infectious diseases.

Vaccines help your baby's body prepare to fight deadly diseases.
Here's how . . . it takes practice

• First: Vaccine is given by shot or as a liquid by mouth--vaccines contain a weak or dead disease germ.

• Next: The body makes antibodies to fight the weak or dead germs in the vaccine.

• Then: These antibodies practice on the weak germs so when the real, strong disease germs--which can be lurking all around--invade the child's body, the antibodies will know how to destroy them and the child will not become ill.

• Finally: Protective antibodies stay on guard in the child's body to safeguard it from the real disease germs.

Antibodies fight infectious diseases and usually stay in your system--even after the disease is gone--to protect you from getting sick again. This is called immunity.

Newborn babies are immune to many diseases because they have antibodies they got from their mothers. But this immunity does not last. It wears off in the first year of life. Fortunately, we can keep children immune to many diseases, even after they lose their mothers' antibodies. We do this by vaccinating them against those diseases.

Vaccines give your baby's immune system the chance to practice and make protective antibodies before real germs invade. If left totally to chance, your baby's first exposure to a disease may be from a germ too strong for your baby to fight. That's why before parents had vaccines for their children, many children died from whooping cough, measles, diphtheria and other diseases. Those same germs exist today, but today's babies are protected by vaccines.

To learn more about children's immunizations, vaccinations, or baby shots from a CDC information specialist, please call CDC's National Immunization Information Hotline:


 

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