ChildProtect

Your family doctor or pediatrician provides the best health protection for your children on a continuing basis, including childhood immunizations. If however, you are unable to afford immunizations for your child, Lancaster General Health offers free immunizations against childhood diseases to children of Lancaster County through our Child Protect program.

Some parents think that childhood diseases have all but disappeared. As a result, some children are not immunized until they are ready to start school. This leaves them unprotected during the first years of life when death and crippling from these diseases most often occur.

For example

• Diphtheria can cause brain, nerve and heart damage, or death.
• Hemophilus Influenza Type B (HIB) is the leading cause of meningitis (inflammation of the covering of the brain and spinal cord) in very young children.
• Measles may cause infection of the ear, pneumonia, damage to the central nervous system (including the brain), or death.
• Mumps, which cause painful swelling of the glands of the neck, can cause deafness and damage to the central nervous system, pancreas, kidneys and thyroid gland.
• Pertussis (Whooping Cough) is a serious disease of the lungs, nose and throat. Among infectious diseases, it ranks high as a cause of infant deaths.
• Polio (considered a "killer disease" until a vaccine was developed in the mid-1950s) affects children and adults, and can cause crippling paralysis of any part of the body.
• Rubella is usually a mild disease in children. However, if a pregnant woman is infected, her baby may be born with serious birth defects.
• Tetanus (Lockjaw) causes death in about half of the cases.
• Pneumococcal causes sickness and death. In Fact, Pneumococcal disease is reponsible for about 200 deaths each year among children under 5 years old.

Protect your children. Immunize! All of these diseases can be prevented by immunization. If you follow this schedule of immunization, your children should be safe from these harmful diseases.

Important. Regular visits to a pediatrician or a family practice physician are vital to the health of your child. With that in mind, Lancaster General Health encourages parents whose insurance covers immunizations, to have them performed by their physician. We will provide immunizations ONLY to those who do not have insurance.