Before vaccines were available, between three- to four-hundred thousand Canadians would get the measles every year. This disease leads to permanent blindness, brain damage, and even death. Vaccines were created to protect us. Because of the efficacy of vaccinations, we were able to obliterate this disease from Canada in the late 1990s and from the States in the early 2000s.

Not all countries have effective vaccination programs. This means that travelers coming to the States or Canada can bring the virus with them. If everyone here in our country is vaccinated, we have something called “herd immunity.” That means that the disease can come here but it won’t start spreading because we are all protected.

However, some Hollywood celebrities and people with big voices and deep pockets have misconstrued the information out there. They have done a huge amount of damage to the health of a lot of people by touting that vaccines are unsafe. This has become such a controversial topic.

They are not unsafe. You will not get autism from having a vaccine. Vaccines are necessary to prevent these kinds of outbreaks in our population.

Vaccines involve injecting a small amount of the measles virus into your body so that your body can form the appropriate immune response to it.

By not vaccinating your children, you are putting other people in the population at risk. By not getting a vaccine, not only are you showing that you don’t believe in science, but you are also compromising the health of immunocompromised individuals, the elderly and especially young babies.

There is no other choice. There is no safe alternative to not vaccinating. We have the means to protect ourselves against these diseases. Vaccinate your family. Let’s keep these diseases out of our population like they were twenty years ago.