Few public initiatives have improved health like vaccines, scientists say.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, during the last two decades, childhood vaccines have saved the lives of 732,000 children and prevented more than 300 million from getting sick.
One example of the incredible health success of vaccines is the impact of the measles vaccine. The measles vaccine is 97 percent effective at preventing the disease. That's important because for every 10 children infected with measles, one develops an ear infection that can lead to permanent hearing loss. For every 1,000 children with measles, one or two will die. These benefits, plus saving your child from a miserable illness, make the measles vaccine one of the most important public health initiatives.
Other accomplishments of vaccines:
* A 2011 study found that the rotavirus vaccine prevented 65,000 U.S. children from being hospitalized with rotavirus since 2006, according to Live Science.
* About 3 percent of children get a mild, chicken-pox-like rash after the first dose of the pox vaccine, according to the CDC. These children average two to five lesions, compared with the typical 250 to 500 lesions found in children who contract the actual illness, according to the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC).
Chicken pox can cause serious complications, including bacterial infections of the skin, pneumonia, inflammation of the brain and blood stream infections, according to the CDC. Before the vaccine, about 4 million cases of chicken pox in the United States put an estimated 11,000 people in the hospital. About 100 people every year died from the disease, the IAC said.
After the introduction of the chicken pox vaccine, cases of the disease fell nearly 80 percent in the U.S. over a decade, according to a 2012 study.
