Childen and vaccination pain levels

If you have ever sat with a child having multiple vaccinations then you will know it can be a traumatic experience for all concerned. Now some new research may help reduce the pain levels, and make it an easier experience all round.

The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto has carried out a study that reveals that if you give a child the least painful vaccine first, then that can reduce overall pain from multiple injections. If you want to pass this on to your doctor or clinic, the order they found most effective was to give the primary vaccine for diphtheria, polio, tetanus, pertussis, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (DPTaP-Hib) and the final shot was the pneumococcal conjugatevaccine. Giving them in this order definitely resulted in less overall pain than getting the pneumococcal vaccine first as this one causes most pain reaction.

As some parents do refuse vaccinations for their children because of the pain they cause, this could be a simple way of overcoming this problem. If you are interested, they measured the pain levels in two ways; first using the child’s facial expressions, body movements, and crying and also asked the parents to rate their child’s pain. Based on my own experience, I would just have used a sound meter!

Enforced vaccinations?

The subject of vaccinations for children is an emotional subject with parents feeling strongly for and against. I don’t have children so I can’t say what I would do, but I do believe strongly in the individual’s right to choose. That is why I want to draw your attention to a petition before Parliament by Mary Creary, a Labour MP. She wants to make vaccinations compulsory for children and if parents refuse she suggests their children should not be allowed to attend school and the parents should not receive child benefits.

Many alternative therapists, particularly homoeopaths, are against wholesale vaccination on health grounds as they can compromise the immune system of a developing child and they have got up a petition to voice their protests. Anyone can sign who wishes to and they have nearly six and a half thousand signatures so far.

The closing date to sign online is 29th November so you don’t have much time to make your voice heard. Here’s the link: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/forcedvaccines/

This is now closed – You can still see the results of the petition online at the link above.