Melinda Gates Quotes

Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections.

I believe that babies should be vaccinated pretty much as soon as they exit the womb.

I think children should be vaccinated because that affects the health of all the other children.

When I was a child, there were not that many vaccines. I was vaccinated for polio. I actually got measles as a child. I got pertussis, whooping cough. I remember that very well.

Vaccinations absolutely work, and have dramatically decreased rates of childhood diseases.

Why do people refuse to vaccinate their children against measles or whooping cough? In many cases, because they have never seen measles and have no idea what it might do.

You can't save kids just with vaccines.

You no more have the right to risk others by failing to vaccinate than you do by sending your child to school with a hunting knife. Vaccination isn't a private choice but a civic obligation.

Having children makes you see the world in a completely different way. When you're responsible for those little lives, you can't slough it off or forget about it until later.

We give our kids vaccinations. That's a biological enhancement that's considered not just acceptable but actually admirable.

Most parents vaccinate their kids. That is the bottom line.

Vaccination is a public health issue because influenza is a highly contagious disease. If you don't vaccinate your child, his or her schoolmates are much more likely to become ill. That is why some places (New York, for example) are making the vaccine mandatory for school children.

In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation. This I mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen.

When children are immunized, it's really the beginning of a new day for them.

He is so mean, he won't let his little baby have more than one measle at a time.

As a parent, the responsible thing to do - if you love your child - is to vaccinate your child.

Vaccines are a miracle; they're fantastic. Anything that makes people hesitate to give their children these vaccines according to the recommended schedule creates risk. Risk for the children who don't get vaccinated and risk for children, some of whom don't have an immune system, so they're benefiting from the fact that the community protection means the disease doesn't get to them.

When you have a child, as anyone knows who has them, that's basically all you want to talk about.

Having children is exciting. Life puts the past into perspective.

I haven't really made up my mind concretely about having kids.

I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity.

If you're the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I'm a parent. I have daughters.

Universal vaccination may well be the greatest success story in medical history.

As a nonparent, I stand in awe of parents.

Vaccines are the most cost-effective health care interventions there are. A dollar spent on a childhood vaccination not only helps save a life, but greatly reduces spending on future healthcare.