Immunizations

The physicians and staff at Forest Hills Pediatric Associates believe strongly in the necessity of childhood and adolescent vaccinations. Some people ask the question "why do we still need vaccines?" Some diseases are still a very real present day threat to our children. Diseases like chickenpox, whooping cough, "flu" and meningitis still occur regularly in the United States. Other diseases occur less often here, but outbreaks could happen rapidly if our vaccination rates declined. These would include measles, mumps and rubella. Some diseases occur frequently in other parts of the world, so travel there puts us at risk. Often people traveling to the United States bring those diseases here. These include polio and diphtheria.
To put the problem in perspective, let's look at what parents experienced before routine vaccinations. Every year parents in the United States could expect that:

Polio would paralyze 10,000 kids.
Rubella (German Measles) would cause birth defects and mental retardation in 20,000 newborns.
Measles would infect 4 million children, killing 3,000.
Diphtheria would be a common cause of death in the school-aged child, with a mortality of 10-20% in infants.
Haemophilus Influenzae Type B Meningitis would infect 15,000 children, most of whom would suffer permanent brain damage, and kill 600 of them.
Whooping Cough (Pertussis) would kill 9,000 infants and infect about 200,000 people.
Chickenpox would infect 4 million people causing 11,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths.

With the virtual elimination of many infectious diseases, parents have begun questioning the safety and effectiveness of vaccinations and we encourage open discussion of the true risks and benefits of vaccination. However, because we believe that protecting children and the population as a whole from these diseases to be of critical importance, parents who choose to decline vaccination will not be accepted into our practice as new patients.
Patients who wish to gather more information should see the following websites: The Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: under "Your Child's Health" then "Vaccine Education." Included are the videos "Vaccines and Your Baby" and "Vaccines: Separating Fact from Fear."
The Centers for Disease Control, under "Vaccines & Immunizations"

Forest Hills Pediatrics follows the immunizations schedule listed below