Creating a Healthy Future

As I look forward to going home after spending many weeks out of town taking care of my seriously ill mother, I am especially excited to see my new grandson, born a few weeks ago.  I am lucky to have three healthy grandchildren, and they bring me so much joy.  I hope their parents  –my son and his wife — will never go through the sadness and heartache of losing a child, especially losing one to a vaccine-preventable disease, as my husband and I did.  My son knows loss, because he lost his brother to bacterial meningitis at the age of 20.  His grief will never end, nor will my grief and my husband’s grief.  I am thankful that there are vaccines available today to protect my grandchildren, that weren’t available when my children grew up.  But, there are still diseases for which there are no vaccines, so we must never be complacent.  I am very excited that there is already a vaccine for infant meningitis, licensed for 9 month olds, and look forward to other vaccines being licensed in the near future.  I hope that parents will be lined up at their health care providers’ offices when these vaccines are licensed.  Let’s have our children and grandchildren grow up and enjoy life, and not suffer from a vaccine-preventable disease.