Vaccines can prevent many common childhood diseases such as chickenpox, whooping cough and measles. Here’s what you need to know.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported nearly 33,000 cases of pertussis (whooping cough) in unvaccinated children in 2014—a 15 percent increase over 2013.
- In 2012, the CDC recorded more than 48,000 pertussis cases, the most since 1955.
- Measles were eliminated from the U.S. in 2000. But this deadly disease returned back in 2014, with 667 cases recorded by the CDC, because parents were not vaccinating their children.
- In 1996, when the U.S. vaccination program began, chickenpox caused more than 100,000 hospitalizations and claimed more than 100 lives every year. Since that time, chickenpox deaths have decreased 90 percent and hospitalizations have fallen 85 percent.
- In 2009, about 1 in 12 U.S. people had asthma, and that number increases every year. An estimated 6.3 million children have asthma.