Why children get so many vaccines

This is the recommended childhood vaccination schedule in the United States. It's a monthly schedule that breaks down the age a child should be vaccinated for common infectious diseases. Here's measles at 12 months and polio starting at 2 months. Here's hepatitis B, recommended often before a baby even leaves the hospital. These are all diseases that at one time came with a host of horrifying side effects.

Things like brain damage, paralysis, and even death. And so parents and pediatricians have followed these recommendations for decades. But in recent years, there's been a lot of confusion and concern. More and more parents are choosing to delay or even outright omit parts of the schedule. And to be fair, this can be very overwhelming. Why do young children need so many shots on such a tight schedule?

Let's break it down. Well, first of all, I think we do ask a lot of parents in this country. I mean, we ask them to give vaccines that prevent 14 different diseases in the first few years of life. That can mean as many as 25 shots during that time.

>> Dr. Paul Offetta is the director of the vaccine education center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

>> I think the skepticism or push back is perfectly understandable. I think it'd be amazing if people didn't push back a little bit on vaccines, >> especially because we're talking about children as young as a day old, which makes giving them shots very scary, but also very necessary. Newborns are one of the most vulnerable populations in healthcare. Their organs are still developing and their immune systems are brand new.

>> When you're born, you're you're initially in a virtually sterile environment in the womb, but then when you pass through the birth canal and you're in the world, you're not. This means that babies are especially susceptible to certain diseases.

Consider RSV, respiratory sensitial virus.

>> There are 60,000 to 80,000 hospitalizations every year in the United States for children who were infected with RSV.

>> It's the number one cause of hospitalization in the United States in under one year olds.