I am the vaccinating minority in my community.

I live in a close knit community. It consists of people of various races, cultures and nationalities but we do have one thing in common. We are all Muslim. I became a part of the community after I became Muslim in 2010. After marrying my husband we wanted to live amongst people with similar ideals and who could offer support to the minority group I had just become a part of. It was great for me as my family lived interstate and I had no friends that  were at the same stage in life. Upon entering the community I felt I had made a great choice. They delivered home cooked meals when I had my son. We got together for dinners, high teas and play groups. I felt they understood me and could really support me in every decision I made... except one. I became a minority within the minority.

 What many people may not know is that Muslims form a large part of the anti-vaxer movement. A movement I am familiar with after growing up in northern NSW. I now do not form part of that movement however I was as a child not vaccinated as my uncle had suffered a reaction to a vaccination as an infant. This combined with a close proximity to Nimbin inevitably meant I would contract a preventable illness and the one I got is recognisable as being one of the most devastating. Whooping Cough.

 I was seven and my sister was an infant. I was at first diagnosed asthmatic however my persistent mother eventually got the correct diagnosis. My cough was bad. I coughed up blood, my chest felt bruised and at times I was scared I wouldn't catch my breath. My sister being much younger ended up in hospital. I still cough in my sleep to this day and at times I cough so hard I almost vomit. It is an experience that made me realise why we need vaccines.

Whooping cough can cause a baby to have broken ribs.

 After my first child was born I faced the anti-vaccine propaganda for the first time however well informed nurses and my own mother helped me to see that vaccines had more positives than negatives. I already had the whooping cough booster and so did my relatives in order to protect my son but as soon as he reached the correct age he was inoculated. We were safe or so I thought. I soon realised that some of friends were not vaccinating their children. I had allowed my son prior to being vaccinated to be around unvaccinated kids but I was relieved that he now had his whooping cough vaccine.

 I felt we would be safe as my son would get all his vaccinations and not be at risk playing with other children. How naive I was because at 11 months old I took my son to hospital. His face was so puffed up and he had a fever close to 40 degrees celsius. The doctor who assessed him turned to her senior and told him it was classic mumps. Mumps! I had never even met anyone who had contracted mumps before. How could my son get mumps. The doctor explained it had re-emerged after vaccine rates fell and frustratingly doctors were treating more people for a completely avoidable disease.

My son with mumps

After my son recovered I decided to inform my community of the risk of these diseases. I made a post telling them of my experience as a child and as a mother. I was surprised though that majority of parents defended the anti-vaccine stance. They hurled hidden insults like "unlike others I have done my research" or "I am intelligent enough to see the truth". Any reply to say I believed doctors knew a lot more as they studied medicine for years was seen as an insult. I was told I could prevent diseases like mumps through eating certain foods and that I should take a naturalist point of view. I bit my tongue. I wanted to scream at them that they were stupid and if they had an health profession I might think what they were saying had some truth but they didn't. I found their reasons almost hypocritical. When there children got sick they went to the doctors and got scripts for anti-biotics. Some also happily fed their children processed food filled with preservatives whilst lecturing me that "unnatural" vaccines caused autism.

The swelling lasted for a few of days.

My stance of being pro-vaccines was becoming shaky as I realised about 75% of my community were anti-vaxers. I was bombarded on my Facebook feed with anti-vaccine propaganda. "Articles" from websites that had no links to scientific journals or were even peer reviewed. I saw how Bill Gates was killing Africans. Gardisal was killing our teens. MMR was causing autism. But the worst of all was when friends became first time mums. If they even mentioned they were worried about vaccinating (usually because needles make babies cry) the anti-vaccine mums would warn against vaccinating altogether. Even if I shared my point of view I was outnumbered.

I couldn't understand why people would be against something that had so many benefits. That was until I visited India. India is in you face with poverty and lack of sanitation. Along with that comes diseases including Polio. I saw polio up close and my niece, a doctor, had polio infected patients visit her practice. She had told me how people who refused the vaccine due to religious reasons sometimes returned with Polio wishing they had taken the vaccine. Polio is not something you can easily hide from view. Unlike other diseases where children usually die or recover to full health Polio often leaves crippled survivors who become constant reminders of its devastation. That is where I realised why people continue to be anti-vaxers.

We have seen autism, vaccine reactions and children recover from measles and other disease unscathed. But we do not see the children that die, we have never seen the child on a ventilator for whooping cough, we don't see the cripple with polio begging for money. This is all because vaccines reduce the occurrence of these diseases.. We like to weigh up the pros and cons from our experience and the truth is that more people have known a child that reacted to a vaccine than a child that contracted a deadly disease. This is to be expected in a highly vaccinated nation. But as vaccine rates fall especially in my community, there is no doubt we will see more of the latter. Maybe it is time we got tougher and start showing the uglier side of these diseases. Maybe we show the world through pictures and stories so we too can be reminded why we must protect our children.

Polio is very confronting.