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One of the first patientsI had to see as a pediatrician was Sol,

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a beautiful month-old baby

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who was admitted with signsof a severe respiratory infection.

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Until then, I had never seena patient worsen so fast.

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In just two daysshe was connected to a respirator

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and on the third day she died.

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Sol had whooping cough.

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After discussing the case in the roomand after a quite distressing catharsis,

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I remember my chief resident said to me,

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"OK, take a deep breath, wash your face,

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and now comes the hardest part,

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we have to go talk to her parents."

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At that time, a thousand questions came to mind,

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from: "How could a one month-old baby be so unfortunate?"

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to: "Could we have done something about it?"

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Before vaccines existed,

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many infectious diseaseskilled millions of people per year.

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During the 1918 flu pandemic

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50 million people died.

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That's greaterthan Argentina's current population.

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Perhaps, the older ones among youremember the polio epidemic

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that occurred in Argentina in 1956.

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At that time, there was no vaccineavailable against polio.

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People didn't know what to do.They were going crazy.

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They would go painting trees with caustic lime.

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They would put little bags of camphor inside their children's clothes

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as if that could do something.

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During the polio epidemicthousands of people died.

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And thousands of people were left with very significant neurological damage.

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I know this because I read about it,

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because thanks to vaccinesmy generation was lucky

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to not live through an epidemicas terrible as this.

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Vaccines are one of the great successesof the twentieth century's public health.

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After potable water,

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they are the interventionsthat have most reduced mortality,

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even more than antibiotics.

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Vaccines eradicated terrible diseases such as smallpox from the planet

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and succeeded in significantly reducing mortality

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due to other diseases such as measles,

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whooping cough, polio and many more.

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All these diseases are considered

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vaccine-preventable diseases.

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What does this mean?

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That they are potentially preventable,

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but in order to be so, something must be done.

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You need to get vaccinated.

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I imagine that most,if not all of us here today,

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received a vaccineat some point in our life.

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Now, I'm not so sure that many of us know

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which vaccines or boosters we should receive after adolescence.

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Have you ever wonderedwho we are protecting

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when we vaccinate?

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What do I mean by that?

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Is there any other effectbeyond protecting ourselves?

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Let me show you something.

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Imagine for a moment

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we are in a city

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that has never had a caseof a particular disease,

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such as measles.

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This would mean that in this city no one has ever had contact with the disease.

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No one has either the natural defenses against, nor been vaccinated against measles.

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If one day, a person sick with the measlesappears in this city

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the disease won't find much resistance

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and will begin spreadingfrom person to person,

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and in no time it will disseminatethroughout the community.

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After a certain time

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a big part of the population will be ill.

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This happened when there were no vaccines.

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Now, imagine the complete opposite case.

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We are in a city

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where more than 90 percentof the population

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has defenses against measles.

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It means that they've had the disease,and have developed natural defenses.

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They either survived, or were immunized against measles.

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And one day,

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a person sick with the measlesappears in this city.

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The disease will find much more resistance

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and won't be transmittedthat much from person to person.

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The spread will probably remain contained

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and a measles outbreak won't happen.

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I would like youto pay attention to something.

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People who are vaccinated

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are not only protecting themselves,

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but by blocking the disseminationof the disease

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within the community,

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they are indirectly protectingthe people in this community

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who are not vaccinated.

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They create a kind of protective shield

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which prevents then from coming in contactwith the disease,

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so that these people are protected.

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This indirect effect of protection

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which unvaccinated people havewithin a community,

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simply by being surroundedby vaccinated people,

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is called herd immunity.

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Many people in the community

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depend almost exclusivelyon this herd immunity

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to be protected against disease.

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These people displayed in infographicsare not just hypothetical.

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These people are our nephews,our children,

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who may be too youngto receive their first shots.

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They are our parents, our brothers,

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our acquaintances,

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who may have a disease,

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or receive medicationwhich lowers their defenses.

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There are also peopleallergic to a particular vaccine.

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They could even be among us,

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any of us who got vaccinated,

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but the vaccinedidn't produce the expected effect,

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because not all vaccinesare always 100 percent effective.

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All these people depend almost exclusively

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on herd immunityto be protected against diseases.

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To achieve this effect of herd immunity,

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it is necessary that a large percentageof the population be vaccinated.

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This percentage is called the threshold.

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The threshold depends on many variables.

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It depends on the germ's characteristics,

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and those of the immune responsethat the vaccine generates.

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But they all have something in common.

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If the percentage of the populationin a vaccinated community

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is below this threshold number,

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the disease will beginto spread more freely

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and may generate an outbreak

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of this disease within the community.

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Even diseases

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which at some point were controlledmay reappear.

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This is not just a theory.

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This happened and is still happening.

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In 1998, a British researcherpublished an article

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in one of the most importantmedical journals,

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saying that the MMR vaccine,

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which is given for measles,mumps and rubella,

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was associated with autism.

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This generated an immediate impact.

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People began to stop getting vaccinated,and stop vaccinating their children.

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And what happened?

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The number of people vaccinated,

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in many communities around the world,fell below this threshold.

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And there were outbreaks of measlesin many cities in the world.

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In the U.S., in Europe.

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Many people got sick.

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People died of measles.

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What happened?

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This article also generated a huge stirwithin the medical community.

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Dozens of researchers began to assessif this was actually true.

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Not only could no one find

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a causal association between MMRand autism at the population level,

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but it was found that this articlehad incorrect claims.

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Even more, it was fraudulent.

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It was fraudulent.

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In fact, the journal publicly retracted

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the article in 2010.

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One of the main concerns and excusesfor not getting vaccinated

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are the adverse effects.

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Vaccines, like other drugs,

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can have potential adverse effects.

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Most are mild and temporary.

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But the benefits are always greater

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than possible complications.

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When we are ill,

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we want to heal fast.

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Many of us who are here

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take antibioticswhen we have an infection,

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We take anti-hypertensiveswhen we have high blood pressure;

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we take cardiac medications.

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Why? Because we are sickand we want to heal fast.

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And we don't question it much.

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Why is it so difficultto think of preventing diseases,

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by taking care of ourselveswhen we are healthy?

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We take care of ourselves a lotwhen affected by an illness,

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or in situations of imminent danger.

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I imagine most of us here,

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remember the influenza-A pandemic

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which broke out in 2009in Argentina and worldwide.

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When the first casesbegan to come to light,

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we, here in Argentina,were entering the winter season.

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We knew absolutely nothing.

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Everything was a mess.

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People wore masks on the street,ran into pharmacies to buy alcohol gel.

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People would queue up in the pharmaciesto receive a vaccine,

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without even knowingif it was the right vaccine

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that would protect themagainst this new virus.

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We knew absolutely nothing.

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At that time, in addition to doingmy research scholarship

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at the Infant Foundation,

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I worked as a home pediatricianfor a prepaid medicine company.

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I remember that I startedmy shift at 8 am

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and already I had a listof 50 scheduled visits.

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It was chaos,people didn't know what to do.

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I remember the types of patientsthat I was examining.

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The patients were a little olderthan what we were used to see in winter,

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with longer fevers.

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And I remember I told my research scholarship mentor,

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and he, for his part, had heardthe same from a colleague,

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about the large numberof pregnant women

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and young adults

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being hospitalizedin intensive care,

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with difficult to manage clinical profiles.

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At that time,we set out to understand

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what was happening.

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First thing Monday morning, we took the car

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and went to a hospitalin Buenos Aires province,

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that was supposed to bea referral hospital

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for cases of the new influenza virus.

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We arrived at the hospital; it was crowded.

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All health staff were dressedin NASA-like bio-safety suits.

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We â with face masks in our pockets.

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Being a hypochondriac,I didn't breathe for two hours.

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But we could see what was happening.

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Immediately, we started reaching outto pediatricians

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from six hospitals in the cityand the Buenos Aires province.

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Our main goal was to find out

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how this new virus behaved in contact with our children,

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in the shortest time possible.

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A marathon work.

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In less than three months

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we could see what effectthis new H1N1 virus had

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on the 251 childrenhospitalized by this virus.

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We could see which childrengot more seriously ill:

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children under four,especially those less than one year old;

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patients with neurological diseases,

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and young childrenwith chronic pulmonary diseases.

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Identifying these at-risk groupswas important

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to include them as priority groups

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in the recommendationsfor getting the influenza vaccine,

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not only here in Argentina,

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but also in other countrieswhich the pandemic not yet reached.

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A year later,

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when a vaccine against the pandemic H1N1 virus became available,

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we wanted to see what had happened.

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After a huge vaccination campaign

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aimed at protecting at-risk groups,

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these hospitals,

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with 93 percentof the at-risk groups vaccinated,

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had not a single patient

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with the pandemic H1N1 virus.

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(Applause)

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In 2009:

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251.

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In 2010:

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Zero.

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Vaccination is an actof individual responsibility,

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but it has a huge collective impact.

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If I get vaccinated,not only am I protecting myself,

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but I am also protecting others.

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Sol had whooping cough.

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Sol was very young,

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and she hadn't yet received her first vaccine against whooping cough.

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I still wonderwhat would have happened

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if everyone around Sol

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had been vaccinated.

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(Applause)