Health Medical Homework Help

Part 1

Your response to your peers by extending, refuting/correcting, or adding additional nuance to their posts.

Nursing Discussion on Vaccinations

Individual rights should never be compromised, regardless of the circumstance. There are many ways that communicable diseases can be reduced or even eliminated, without having vaccine mandates and rigid policies. Although vaccines have proven to be effective for reducing the presence of certain diseases in communities, there are also other programs that can be initiated in which the freedoms of individuals are not compromised. One way this can occur is through educating families and their children about healthy hygiene and eating habits. The immune system is a strong force within the body that can adequately fight off hundreds of thousands of different illnesses and diseases. Maintaining health within the body through eating healthily is a great way to fight against diseases. Students can be taught the many ways diseases can be preventing or eradicated, including eating a balanced and healthy diet, exercising regularly, drinking water regularly, taking vital vitamins such as Vitamin A, B, C, D, E, and Zinc, and consuming probiotics (Edwards, 2014). These are just some of the many ways that people can fight off a virus using the natural immune system they already have.

People should always be given a choice on what to do for their health and what their healthcare is. If a school requires all students must be vaccinated for a certain disease, it would need to argued what the survival rate of the virus is, what the chances of the age category are of getting the virus, and the transmissibility rate (Ulmer & Liu, 2002). If the virus can be easily defeated through healthy living and the methods mentioned above, then vaccines should not be required and should be made available to those who want one. In the United States, a person’s freedom of choice should always be protected, no matter what the circumstances are, because if not, this could lead to legal and ethical issues for the institutions that mandate them. The rights of individuals must be protected in the United States rather than first protecting society as a whole given that choosing methods to vaccine an entire population first before considering the rights of individuals could discriminate against certain religions, ways of life, medical history, or personal preferences. It is important to acknowledge that parents have a role and responsibility for raising their children in a way they feel is best for them, not what is best according to society, a school board, or the government. When these individual rights and decisions are slowly taken away, it can lead to the slippery slope of other freedoms being taken away at the expense of the individual. The United States is a place of differences and variability, and to push a vaccine mandate for all children in a school for the benefit of society seems to decrease that variability by making each child vaccinated against a virus that could be eradicated in different ways (Ulmer & Liu, 2002). Some children may have weaker immune systems, in which their parents would feel it would be best for them to be vaccinated. Other parents may have children who have strong immune systems who would think that their child would be able to fight off the virus and gain natural immunity. Again, these choices must be made up to the parents and what they believe is best for their children, not the school.

References

Edwards, M. (2014). How viruses work and how to prevent and eliminate them naturally.

Urology of Virginia. Retrieved from https://www.urologyofva.net/articles/category/

healthy-living/4126629/03/13/2020/how-viruses-work-and-how-to-prevent-and-

eliminate-them-naturally

Ulmer, J. and Liu, M. (2002). Ethical issues for vaccines and immunizations. Nature Reviews

Immunology, 2. p. 291-296. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/nri780

Below I have 2 posts please provide a response for both. 150 words each with reference.

Part 2

Your response to your peers by extending, refuting/correcting, or adding additional nuance to their posts.

Individual Rights & Vaccination Policy

      With increasing hesitation, uncertainty and resistance to vaccines for children, we are witnessing a resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases in many developed countries. One of the obstacles to the success of vaccination programs is the recent apparent increase in hesitancy and open resistance of some parents and patients to recommended vaccination schedules. Recently, Covid-19 vaccine has created a climate of heated vaccine debates around some related ethical considerations. Should individual rights, especially the parents’ rights to decide whether to vaccinate their children, be compromised to control the spread of communicable diseases for the good of society?

      Childhood vaccination involves a balance between parental autonomy in deciding whether to vaccinate a child and the public health benefits of mandating the vaccine. Ethical concerns about childhood vaccination extend to several areas of public health, including policy makers, clinicians, and other professionals. Feelings of anti-vaccine and vaccine anxiety are widespread through social networks, both online and face-to-face, but more and more studies claim that such feelings are subtle.

      Families who hesitate or refuse to vaccinate their children often take their position on the grounds that it is their opinion that it is in the best interests of the child or for religious reasons. For a variety of reasons, some people find vaccines harmful and useless, while others believe that vaccination is unnatural and that natural immunity is preferable. Others believe that they enjoy herd immunity without putting their children at risk of vaccination.  Although respecting a parental right and autonomy is important, alternatives allowing only opinions and attitudes to support behavior which may be based on false information or perceptions pose as great a threat to public health as the unvaccinated people themselves. Parents refuse to vaccinate their children for several reasons to include: religious reasons, personal beliefs or philosophical reasons, safety concerns, and a desire for more information from healthcare providers (McKee & Bohannon, 2016).

      Safety and efficacy concerns are common to those considering vaccination, but more scrutiny is placed on children’s vaccinations and parents’ right to refuse them. The risk of infection often justifies the use of vaccination, compared to the low risk of side effects. Vulnerable populations, like children, are biologically more susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases than others (CDC, 2017). When parents refuse to vaccinate their children, they expose their children to vaccine-preventable illnesses.

      Although it is necessary to protect the rights of individuals, it is important to point out that several court decisions have established that religious freedom does not allow the endangerment of others, including public health and the health of one’s children. The right to practice religion freely does not include the freedom to expose communities and children to infectious diseases, or to expose children to illness or death. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), vaccination has reduced the burden of infectious diseases to a significant extent (2018).

      A crucial point in the vaccine debate is that human rights empower everyone to be harmless. COVID-19 poses a serious public health risk not only for those who have not been vaccinated on their own, but also for those who are not yet vaccinated, such as children under the age of 12, and for people in low-income countries that still lack a sufficient supply of vaccines.

      Preventive care is a cornerstone of public health. Although there is much debate about childhood immunization policies, from a public health perspective, they are often considered the best way to mitigate the effects of the disease. While there are still skeptics about the consequences, most healthcare professionals agree that vaccinations, including those for young children, have benefits that far outweigh their costs. Vaccines play an important role in establishing herd immunity, which is the minimum threshold needed to protect the community by ensuring the prevention and maintenance of disease outbreaks. Healthcare providers should view vaccine hesitancy or opposition not as frustration or a threat to public health, but as opportunities to educate and inform.

References

McKee, C., & Bohannon, K. (2016). Exploring the Reasons Behind Parental Refusal of Vaccines. The Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics: JPPT, 21(2), 104–109.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2017). For Parents: Vaccines for Your Children. Retrieved February 09, 2018, from https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/parents/vaccinedecisi…

WHO. (2018). Ethical considerations for vaccination programmes in acute humanitarian emergencies. Retrieved from: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/91/4/12-113480…