American Adults Not Getting Vaccinated

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Main Category: Immune System / Vaccines
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 24 Jan 2008 - 15:00 PDT

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According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not enough American adults are getting vaccinated and as a result are leaving themselves vulnerable to a range of avoidable diseases.

Speaking in a teleconference to the press yesterday, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr Anne Schuchat said:

"We are at the infancy of developing the strong adult immunization program that we'd like to have."

The CDC was revealing results of the National Immunization Survey conducted in the summer of 2007.

Schuchat told the press in a teleconference that Americans have to get past the mentality that vaccines are only for children, vaccines are for everybody", she said.

Schuchat explained that adults can get seriously ill and die from diseases that are easily preventable by vaccines. When adults get vaccinated they help save money, stay healthy, continue working, and remain able to take care of their families.

The new version of the survey, which included adults for the first time last year, found that:

• Just over 2 per cent of eligible adults (18 to 64 year olds) have had the tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough shot.


• Just under 2 per cent of older patients (60 and over) have had the newly licensed shingles vaccine, Zostavax.


• Only 10 per cent of eligible adult women (aged 18 to 26) have had the HPV vaccine (against human papillomavirus).


• And, although 69 per cent of adults had the flu vaccine, and 66 per cent had the pneumococcal vaccine, this is far short of the CDC's 90 per cent goal.

More than 1 million adult Americans a year get shingles, an extremely painful condition that infects mostly older people and causes a blistering skin rash. One in 5 cases results in severe nerve pain that lasts months, and in some cases, years. The virus strikes older people who have had chickenpox, because the chickenpox virus lies dormant in nerve cells until the person reaches their 60s.

There are more than 100 different strains of HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infectious disease. Most of the time the body manages to get rid of the virus and its symptoms but the high-risk types that vaccines protect against can linger and cause genital warts, and are known to cause over 70 per cent of cervical cancers.

Whooping cough vaccine is routinely given to children and babies but it wears off once a person gets to their teens. Adults usually make a good recovery, but the illness is very upleasant and the cough can be violent enough to break ribs. The other important risk is that infected adults can pass it onto infants who have not yet been vaccinated, thus risking their lives.

The CDC said adults should be vaccinated against: chickenpox, diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, HPV/cervical cancer, influenza, measles, meningococcal disease (meningitis), mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), pneumococcal disease (pneumonia), rubella, shingles and tetanus.

In a separate statement, Dr William Schaffner, vice president of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said altogether these diseases killed more Americans every year than traffic accidents, breast cancer or HIV/AIDS.

There appears to be a significant awareness problem among adult Americans which has been highlighted by the survey, for not only are the majority woefully not coming forward for these important vaccinations, most are not even aware of the types of diseases they are vulnerable to in adulthood, that are easily preventable by vaccines. This was another important finding of the survey, said the CDC.

Click here to go to CDC webpages on adult vaccinations.

Sources: CDC press release, Washinton Post, MedPage Today, CNN.

Written by: Catharine Paddock
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today