There are many things you never expect to hear, even living abroad. I remember when my pediatrician mentioned in conversation how it was meningitis season. Say what?! Don't you mean cold season??
That too.
Seriously, being raised in the states you take certain things for granted, like the lack of gnarly diseases. Our most reason run in was with Scarlet Fever. I thought everyone was joking but no, 2 kids at my sons' school were diagnosed with it. Our pediatrician actually diagnosed one of them. What's next, Cholera?
But it is a fact of life in a third world country. While people in the bigger cities pretty much have little risk of being exposed to anything like this, things happened. A close friend of mine's son came down with not one but two types of meningitis at the same time.
That is where the public system comes in. They do massive free vaccination campaigns down here. Any given month it is any given thing, and people push you left and right to go in and take it. I can't even tell you how many arguments I've gotten in with peoples' nannies when I said my kids didn't need them! My kids are up to date on vaccinations. They have it all, Brazilian public and private.
Sorry anti-vaccine, it is a fact of life where I live. I do, however, draw the line at double vaccinating. They truly push everyone to go back in as mass vaccinations are the easiest way to eliminate a disease in a population.
Of course I went to my pediatrician and asked him directly. Does Chatterbox (as The Menace wasn't born yet) really need to get this again? He said no but to not talk it about (oops). He said that the sad thing is that the public medical community is so overloaded that it can not manage to educate the general public as it should. If they should give an out then people who should get vaccinated may not, nulling the process as a whole.
While the process of being harassed into getting repeats of yet another vaccine annoys the crap out of me, I understand where it comes from. Part of me wonders if Americans have forgotten why vaccines were made in the first place and how powerful these diseases can be. Obviously it is a personal decision but it does effect the public as a whole.
My bottom line, if you are going to live in the 3rd world, please vaccinate. S
