Wanhopige moeder van dochter met kanker roept alle ouders op hun kinderen te vaccineren
Het is regelmatig in het nieuws: over de hele wereld is de vaccinatiegraad aan het dalen. En dat is een groot probleem, want om de immuniteit in stand te houden, moeten er genoeg kinderen gevaccineerd zijn. Anders krijgen ziektes zoals polio of de mazelen vrij spel.
Afgelopen week plaatste de Amerikaanse Nicole een betoog op Twitter over het belang van vaccins, juist voor deze kwetsbare groep kinderen. Haar dochter van 8 werd tijdens het ondergaan van een chemokuur in de winkel blootgesteld aan een kind met de mazelen, wat grote gevolgen had voor haar en de andere kinderen op haar afdeling. Zo moest haar dochter een maand in quarantaine, de behandel- en wachtkamer van de dokter moesten speciaal gereinigd worden en de andere kinderen op haar afdeling liepen het risico ook geïnfecteerd te worden. Allemaal omdat een kindje in de supermarkt de mazelen had.
Want dat is het punt: als iedereen zich laat inenten tegen de mazelen, komt het uiteindelijk niet meer voor. Daarom is de dekkingsgraad voor groepsimmuniteit zo belangrijk. Lees Nicole’s volledige betoog hieronder:
Dear parents of children who do not have cancer: a casual measles exposure in a grocery store caused the following things to happen when my child was in chemotherapy:
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
1: My daughter was quarantined for one month. It’s enough to be bald and chemo stricken at 8, but add being unable to leave the house.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
2: When we arrived at ped/onc they had to cancel appointments and shut down the infusion room while they sorted out the details of her exposure. The treatment of all the other patients (children with cancer) that afternoon was disrupted.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
3: The exam room we were in had to be shut down and given a “terminal cleaning,” disrupting the ped/onc department’s ability to serve other outpatient children with cancer.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
4: On the flight home she had to wear a mask. This may not seem like a big deal, but imagine being eight, bald, skeletal, without eyebrows and eyelashes *and* having to wear a face mask in public.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
5: There was a possibility that other children could have been required to have shots of Neulasta to boost their white blood cell counts. The side effects include terrible bone pain. Fortunately, my daughter’s WBC count was high enough that no children had to go through that.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
6: Our oncology team spent much time working with state epidemiologists to decide what to do. Both for our child and all the other children in the clinic that day. I cried with relief when the told me none of the other children had to take Neulasta.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
We were lucky it was summer. She didn’t have to miss school. She had missed three months while we lived 350 miles away during the first months of chemo. She would have been crushed to miss more.
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
Please #vaccinate your kids. Please get your #flushot. It’s an act of compassion for the many children who need herd immunity because their immune systems are not working. #VaccinesWork
— Nicole Stellon O’Donnell (@SteamLaundry) November 21, 2018
Bron: Scary Mommy
Lees ook: Pleur op met die pokken! – Waarom ik mijn kind extra laat vaccineren
