The HiB vaccine is near and dear to our heart. While we have seen mild cases of whooping cough, we have never had to have a child admitted to the hospital because of pertussis. We have also never seen a case of measles, rubella or congenital rubella syndrome, or diphtheria. But we am old enough to have seen a case of HiB meningitis, and we still remember how sick that little baby was when we admitted him to the hospital.
In 1985 there were approximately twenty thousand cases of severe HiB disease in the United States, with the majority of those infections causing meningitis. In 1995 there were less than a hundred cases of severe HiB disease. The HiB vaccine came out in the late 1980s and effectively wiped out HiB meningitis and other severe HiB infections.
So if we stopped vaccinating against HiB, we would return to the days of our medical training, and we would see this deadly disease again. I, for one, never want to have to take care of another child with HiB meningitis.
