Af­ter breast­feed­ing and lov­ing it up, the next best thing you can do for a child is mak­ing sure it gets all its vac­ci­na­tions.

In some parts of the world, this is be­ing ques­tioned and some child­hood dis­eases are mak­ing a come­back as par­ents ei­ther can­not vac­ci­nate their chil­dren be­cause of cir­cum­stances (con­flict et al) or won’t, main­ly be­cause of so­cial me­dia. It’s the most dan­ger­ous dis­eases, Diph­the­ria, Per­tus­sis, Tetanus (DPT), po­lio and measles, that are mak­ing a grad­ual re­turn.

In the past 12 months, 57 coun­tries have re­port­ed near­ly 11 mil­lion cas­es of measles. The worst-hit coun­tries were Bangladesh (over 42,000 cas­es); In­dia (over 26,000) and Mex­i­co (12,495). In 2024, WHO re­port­ed that there had been 95,000 deaths from measles world­wide.

As of mid-Ju­ly 2026, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion re­port­ed 47,459 con­firmed measles cas­es and 44 measles-re­lat­ed deaths in the Amer­i­c­as—more than triple the to­tal cas­es record­ed for 2025 (which saw 32 deaths).

In the Unit­ed States, so far there have been 4,852 cas­es of measles with three deaths, with an­oth­er three un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. That’s far high­er than the known pro­por­tion of measles deaths to cas­es, which has tra­di­tion­al­ly been one death for every 10,000 cas­es, with a mor­bid­i­ty com­pli­ca­tion of ear in­fec­tions every 10 cas­es, pneu­mo­nia every 100 cas­es and brain in­flam­ma­tion every 1,000.

For diph­the­ria, so far for 2026, there have been just over 30,000 cas­es. Last year, over 1,300 chil­dren died from diph­the­ria, main­ly in Sub-Sa­ha­ran African coun­tries where con­flict and pop­u­la­tion dis­place­ment are rife.

In 2023, there were a whop­ping 19 mil­lion cas­es of whoop­ing cough, with 115,000 deaths, main­ly new­borns.

Tetanus still caus­es rough­ly 35,000 deaths an­nu­al­ly. Tetanus has a mor­tal­i­ty of 30 to 50 per cent. Be­fore we were able to im­mu­nise ba­bies, the ef­fect of watch­ing lit­tle bod­ies ag­o­nise in un­con­trol­lable spasms be­fore dy­ing was in­de­scrib­able.

Whoop­ing cough mor­tal­i­ty was low­er, one1 to three per cent in the un­der-three-month-olds. Its mor­bid­i­ty, how­ev­er, was spec­tac­u­lar, as any­one who re­mem­bers ba­bies strug­gling to breathe as late as the 1980s in our pub­lic hos­pi­tals will tes­ti­fy.

Fi­nal­ly, the one we per­son­al­ly can re­mem­ber, since we had an out­break of po­lio in 1972 with 181 cas­es and 12 deaths. Some 157 of the cas­es were in chil­dren un­der age ten, as were 11 of the deaths. Be­cause of im­mu­ni­sa­tion in 2025, there were on­ly 52 cas­es of po­lio in the world, half in Pak­istan and the oth­er half in Afghanistan.

Death is on­ly one par­tic­u­lar out­come of these dis­eases, which of­ten leave per­ma­nent scars on the bod­ies and minds of chil­dren and their par­ents.

None of these dis­eases had or have any spe­cif­ic treat­ment. Apart from in­ten­sive care sup­port, there is very lit­tle mod­ern med­i­cine can do for a child with any of them, once a child has one of them. Pre­ven­tion is the on­ly way.

Yet, there is this slow in­crease, at least in de­vel­oped coun­tries, in the num­ber of par­ents who want to opt out of im­mu­ni­sa­tions.

Some of the rea­sons are un­der­stand­able. We no longer see cas­es of the dis­eases. Why im­mu­nise? If there are no cas­es, the virus­es must have dis­ap­peared. Why im­mu­nise?

Well, you no longer see cas­es be­cause we im­mu­nise chil­dren. When you do not im­mu­nise chil­dren, cas­es ap­pear. Why? Be­cause the virus or bac­te­ria has not dis­ap­peared. There’s some­thing called an “asymp­to­matic car­ri­er” of a virus or bac­te­ria, which con­sti­tutes a hid­den reser­voir of germs. This means it’s some­one who har­bours the germ but does not get sick with it, but can in­fect some­one else. This typ­i­cal­ly hap­pens with diph­the­ria, whoop­ing cough and po­lio. The bac­te­ria that caus­es tetanus lives in dirt. It will al­ways be with us. Measles lives with peo­ple and is trans­mit­ted by peo­ple. We will not get rid of it un­til the very last measles virus has died.

Par­ents may al­so not see any ad­van­tage of im­mu­nis­ing their child. Some think of it as con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their in­no­cent child. Or sub­mit­ting the child to a painful pro­ce­dure that may have side ef­fects.

These are all un­der­stand­able rea­sons. The an­swers are giv­en above. But there is one at least as good, if not greater.

Im­mu­ni­sa­tion is a cor­ner­stone of in­ter­na­tion­al broth­er­hood, of our com­mon hu­man­i­ty. It is dou­bly blessed. It pro­tects your child from dis­ease and this pro­tects an­oth­er child. This idea may not be eas­i­ly ac­cept­ed in our in­creas­ing­ly self-cen­tred lifestyles but it’s worth a think.