Immunization Policy

Immunization Policy

Physicians To Children since 1977 has been committed to serving the health care needs of our patients by offering and providing routine immunizations as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as well as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). By immunizing our patients, we are preventing not only serious illnesses in our patients but also preventing the spread of serious diseases to other children and adults that our patients may come in contact. While we realize that there are some parents that are concerned with rumors that immunizations are harmful to children, these rumors have been studied thoroughly in the US as well as other countries and have never been proven by good scientific studies. Some of the facts about immunization include:

Vaccines have reduced the amount of children becoming sick, as before vaccines were introduced, parents could expect every year that: “Polio would paralyze 10,000 children. Rubella (German measles) would cause birth defects and mental retardation in as many as 20,000 newborns. Measles would infect about 4 million children, killing 3,000. Diphtheria would be one of the most common causes of death in school-aged children. A bacterium called Haemophilus influenzae type b (HiB) would cause meningitis in 15,000 children, leaving many with permanent brain damage. Pertussis (whooping cough) would kill thousands of infants.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--> Since the introduction of the HiB vaccine in 1990, invasive HiB infections are almost non-existent.

Even though diseases such as polio and measles are rare because of vaccines, outbreaks still occur due to unvaccinated children and adults, such as a polio outbreak in Minnesota in 2005 and measles outbreaks in Boston (2006), Indiana (2005), and Illinois (2005).

“Four large studies have now compared the risk of autism in children who received vaccines containing thimerosal [a form of mercury that is used as a preservative in some vaccines] to those who received vaccines without thimerosal. The studies were consistent, clear and reproducible — the incidence of autism was the same in both groups. Denmark, a country that abandoned thimerosal as a preservative in 1991, actually saw an increase in autism beginning several years later.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]-->

“Methylmercury is found in low levels in water, infant formula and breast milk. Although it is clear that large quantities of mercury can damage the nervous system, there is no evidence that the small quantities contained in water, infant formula and breast milk do. An infant who is exclusively breast-fed will ingest more than twice the quantity of mercury that was ever contained in vaccines and 15 times the quantity of mercury contained in the influenza vaccine.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--> Moreover, the “[s]ymptoms of mercury poisoning are clearly different from the symptoms of autism.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]-->

“Studies of hundreds of thousands of children in the United States, the United Kingdom and Denmark found that children with autism were not more likely to have received the MMR vaccine, or to have received the MMR vaccine recently, than other children.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]-->

All of our vaccines given to our patients are thimerosal-free.

Because of our strong belief in vaccines and the danger that unvaccinated children pose to themselves and their community, we at Physicians To Children have a common belief that all children should be immunized with the vaccines recommended by the AAP. We encourage all parents to visit the VaccineEducationCenter at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s website at vaccine.chop.edu and the Parent Handouts part of our website to better educate themselves on vaccines.

For those parents and caregivers that have a different belief in vaccines and that choose not to vaccinate their children, we feel that it may be best for those families to find another primary care provider that will meet their specific needs and wants.

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<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->VaccineEducationCenter at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia website. vaccine.chop.edu

<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--> “Thimerisol: What You Should Know.” VaccineEducationCenter at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Vol. 1, Spring 2006.

<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--> “Thimerisol: What You Should Know.”

<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]--> “Thimerisol: What You Should Know.”

<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[5]<!--[endif]--> “The Facts About Childhood Vaccines.” VaccineEducationCenter at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Vol. 5, Spring 2007