Routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented hundreds of millions of illnesses, tens of millions of hospitalizations and more than 1 million deaths among people born between 1994 and 2023, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A new report, published Thursday by the CDC, analyzed the benefits of routine childhood immunizations in the United States through the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program, which launched in 1994. The research also found that the vaccinations saved the country billions of dollars.
The researchers, from the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, examined and quantified the health benefits and economic impact of routine immunizations among children in the United States born between 1994 and last year.
The measles, mumps and rubella virus vaccine, shown at the International Community Health Services clinic in Seattle, will have prevented millions of hospitalizations among children born from 1994 to 2023.
Nine vaccines were included in the analysis: diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis or DTaP; Haemophilus influenzae type b or Hib; poliovirus; measles, mumps and rubella; hepatitis B; varicella; hepatitis A; pneumococcal conjugate and rotavirus. Some other common vaccines, including flu, COVID-19 and RSV immunizations, were not included in the analysis.
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The researchers estimated how many children were vaccinated using data from National Immunization Surveys and school vaccination surveys. Disease cases and deaths were estimated using data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System.
The researchers found that among about 117 million children born from 1994 through 2023, routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented some 508 million cases of illness through the children’s lifetimes, 32 million hospitalizations and about 1.13 million deaths.
The cumulative number of illnesses prevented in the study ranged from about 5,000 cases for tetanus to around 100 million for measles and varicella.
The greatest estimated cumulative number of hospitalizations and deaths prevented was about 13.2 million hospitalizations for measles and about 752,800 deaths for diphtheria, the researchers wrote.
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