Vaccination is one of the most efficient methods to prevent yourself from having any life-threatening diseases. This pharmaceutical product helps the body’s immune system to recognize and attack pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria, which manages us to be safe from the diseases, such as tetanus, measles, diphtheria, meningitis, typhoid, cervical cancer, and polio. This is exactly why babies are vaccinated after being born and throughout their school age.
Unfortunately, nearly 20 million people worldwide are missing out on the chance to get vaccinated, putting them at high risk of serious diseases, disability, and death. Although vaccines prevent diseases and are fully tested before being approved to assure its safety, over 48,000 people reported that the vaccine they received caused side effects and adverse reactions – from mild allergic reactions to serious injuries.
Whether your child is experiencing vaccine injury or not, being aware of the things you should know about vaccine injury is important.
Here are four that could help you understand about vaccine injuries:
1. There’s A Difference Between Vaccine Reactions and Vaccine Injury
A vaccine reaction takes place when your body reacts to the pharmaceutical product. The person who received the vaccine may experience mild to moderate symptoms. The symptoms will be resolved without seeing a doctor and they’ll go away on their own.
The most common side effects are swelling, pain, or redness on the area where you got the shot, headache, mild fever, chills, muscles, and joint pain, and fatigue. These side effects are the signs that your body is building protection against the diseases.
On the other hand, experiencing the side effects for a long period of time is a vaccine injury. The adverse reaction requires urgent treatment to prevent death or more serious injuries. Vaccine injuries often cause loss of body function, permanent injuries, and even death.
2. Six Common Injuries Linked to Vaccines
Anti-vaccination websites exaggerate the risk of serious adverse reactions from vaccines and say that autism and shaken baby syndrome are vaccine injuries, which leads to misconceptions. But, there are 6 common injuries reported:
- Transverse myelitis: Once the flu shot hit nerve and damages the myelin, the spinal cord will be inflamed and the myelin will break down. When the nerve fibers are damaged, the communication of the spinal cord nerves and the body may be disrupted.
- Shoulder injury: Experiencing arm soreness is common after getting vaccinated. But, if it’s unusual shoulder pain and the arms can’t be moved for weeks, it’s a shoulder injury. This causes frequent pain or loss of use of the shoulder.
- Encephalitis: This occurs if the immune system responds to the infection and inflames the brain. Symptoms are fatigue, pain, headache, and fever. This injury can also cause permanent brain damage.
- Guillain-Barré syndrome: This syndrome happens when your immune system turns itself and damages the nerve cells, which leads to paralysis and muscle weakness. Although this can be resolved within weeks, it may cause lasting nerve damage.
- Anaphylaxis: A person allergic to the ingredients of the vaccine will have symptoms of itchy hives to swelling of the throat and fainting.
- Chronic Arthritis: Vaccines consisting of the rubella virus can cause chronic rheumatoid arthritis, like the MMR vaccine. Usual symptoms are joint pain and swelling.
3. You Can Be Compensated By The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program
After the parents began filing lawsuits against doctors, nurses, and vaccine companies because of vaccine injuries, there has been a vaccine shortage and endangered the health of the people. That’s why Congress established a law to compensate those injured by the vaccine. The cost is handled by the government and anyone who’s injured is qualified to file a claim.
There are vaccines that are covered by the VICP (Vaccine Injury Compensation Program), such as hepatitis A and B, influenza, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, rubella, mumps, measles, polio, varicella, rotavirus, human papillomavirus, pneumococcal conjugate, meningococcal, Haemophilus influenzae type b, or any combination of the vaccines mentioned.
4. You’re Allowed to Hire Your Vaccine Injury Lawyer to Deal with Your Claim
Find an experienced vaccine injury lawyer that can help and represent you in the VICP. Your lawyer will handle the case and get all the records.
If the minimum requirements are met, the VICP will be the one to give the payment to your lawyer and they’ll also pay for the other legal costs. Whether you were compensated or not, as long as you met certain minimal requirements, the VICP will handle the fees of the other legal costs.
By filing the claim, you should address pieces of information, such as the name of the person injured by the vaccine, what vaccine produced the injury, when was it given, the city or country the vaccine was provided, the type of injury, when was the symptom of the injury occur, and how long the reaction of the injury endured.
Conclusion
If you’re experiencing vaccine injury, action should be done to make sure that the injury will not end up severe and that you’ll be compensated. Aside from that, knowing these medical cases can help you be aware of the symptoms of a vaccine’s adverse event and what to do for your health. After all, vaccines are created to protect your health.
About the Author
Christine Rivera writes blogs about the newest innovations in the healthcare industry. Christine’s articles cover a wide range of topics such as the clinical trials of vaccines, newly discovered illnesses, and trends in the healthcare system in different parts of the world.
